


In and Out the Backdoor of Love

by NorthwesternInsanity



Category: Bon Jovi (Band), Cinderella (Band), Music RPF, Winger (Band)
Genre: Bad Puns, Drama, Forgiveness, Forgotten Love, M/M, On the Highway, One Night Stands, Promises, Starting Over, Trust, bus trip
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2019-10-06 18:25:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 66,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17350298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthwesternInsanity/pseuds/NorthwesternInsanity
Summary: Three years ago, Jon Bon Jovi made a quick entrance to Kip Winger's life and left it just as fast. Three years later in '89, Jon and Kip find themselves back in each other's lives with a month of traveling together ahead. The road inevitably leads them to face their past -and if this time will grant them the possibility to stay.





	1. Prologue 1: The Road Awaits

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Malivrag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malivrag/gifts).



> Written as part of Ficmas 2018 on Rockfic as a prompt fill for Malivrag, who requested a story where Kip Winger and Jon Bon Jovi end up sharing a concert bill with Cinderella in 1989, following a one-night stand in 1986 in Kip's Alice Cooper days -which perhaps should have been more than that, if Jon hadn't forgotten to call Kip afterward, and to add insult to injury, it takes Jon awhile to figure out where he saw Kip before too. ...So, they're on the road together figuring out what they're going to do, and while Winger and Bon Jovi are the primary bands here, since Cinderella is on the bill, they're along for the ride and will eventually have something to do in the plot too.

"...Cinderella and Winger started their run together back in Kentucky at the beginning of this month. They've been making their run out around the Midwest and in the Great Lakes region, and you guys are hooking up with them in Tallahassee. Your first date together is on April 5th; that's two weeks from now. All your dates from that point forward are with each other -they'll have some extras between yours, but Tallahassee, Miami, Tampa, Orlando; everyone gets a couple days off, they play Greenville and Augusta on their own, then you get back with them to play Atlanta and Savannah together. Winger will get a day of downtime with you while Cinderella goes on their own in Greensboro. Everyone gets another day off when they come back from that, then you all get five nights in a row -Columbia, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Hampton, Richmond, we travel up to Hershey..."

Jon Bon Jovi gave the most convincing smile he could to show that he was partially listening as he tuned out most of Doc McGhee's monologue running through the tour logistics. He'd already seen the documentation during the planning stages at the beginning of the tour for all the different stretches with different accompanying bands; thus, nothing their manager had sat him down for in their two-day respite from the road was new or worth burning precious downtime on so far. 

Doc had only now started to deliver new information by going into all the cities they'd be stopping in up the coast, and circling up around their hometowns after another three-day break in the tour. Technically, not even new -Jon had seen it at the start of the year, but had not committed it to memory or had it on a written itinerary when it was months out. And while that information was at least unfamiliar, their tour manager, Richard Bozzett, would go over it anyway when they met up in Florida with Cinderella and Winger to get everyone on the same page together and distribute itineraries, so there wasn't much point in that either.

"...not all the same nights together, but you will be on the same roads together through May fourth -your buses will be on the same path -likely driving right beside each other up the highway if timing getting out of town goes on schedule. You got a main trend up 95 North and all the same side roads running inland; you'll be at all the same hotels... ...and you'll have two more dates with them in July out in Ohio."

Jon flinched as Doc stood up in the middle of his monologue and loudly unfolded the map traced in pen out in front of him that he always showed the tours on. The stretch he was currently on was traced in orange, and the one he'd be on shortly with Cinderella and Winger was traced in green, and on the side, sticky notes with lists of names from each band and everyone involved -the bands, the road crews, even the bus drivers in case someone got lost and their own driver wasn't reachable.

"...So this is who you'll have grouped with you and traveling together for the next month. Every show, every hotel, every night on festival grounds -except for open times on the itinerary where you all are free to do what you want, you guys are all together. Up the coast, take a loop around New England, end with a show in New York, your bus will take you guys right by home in Jersey for a quick stop before heading overseas, and that's when you divert, because Winger's going up to Maine with Cinderella-"

"-and the Cinderella bus will take them to Philly for a break in the three-day gap we have between Richmond and Hershey like I asked when we planned this," Jon cut in. He stated it gently, but in the way that said it had better been done. He'd helped start Cinderella, and he still had a strong mind when it came to making sure they had what they needed.

"Yes," sighed Doc. "We got them a driver employed by the line who lives there, so he would be stopping at that charter station anyway, and they'll be switching drivers to go up North."

"Good."

Jon knew them all very well -Tom, Eric, Fred, and Jeff -and Rick when he had occasional shows with them. He still wanted nothing but the best for those guys. They all had their flaws, much like Jon and his bandmates did, but they were all reasonable and kind in nature. Tom was quieter than the average frontman, but his good looks and ability to stay steady under stress were enough to make up for it.

Much the opposite, Jon didn't know any of the guys in Winger, or if he did, then he couldn't recall having heard any of the names in the past he had heard, and he still had yet to associate all the first names and last names with appropriate combinations. He hadn't directly communicated with any of them over the tour yet -only by messages passed between Doc and their tour manager, Richard Bozzett -but from what he could tell, they were a down to earth bunch too. Tom had met them before, and had told Jon with general terms -not mentioning any names in particular -that they were all a lot of fun to hang out with.

"Rich will brief the rest of the band right before you get to Florida if you need a refresher on it. Do you have any questions?"

Jon started to shake his head out of habit; he'd learned that unless it was something that was a true management case, he was better off to ask a tour manager unless he wanted a much longer and complicated version of the answer. He'd heard enough from Doc about the tour already.

However, Jon _did_ have a question, and one that Doc was his best bet for unless he wanted to wait two weeks to get to Florida. So he stopped himself and pointed up to the ceiling instead.

"Actually, I know you've had files for Cinderella in the past. On that thought, is there any chance you've got anything where I can see who's in Winger, or at least see some names so that I don't look like a complete ass getting there and not knowing who the hell any of them are?"

It wasn't that Jon hadn't heard them on the radio or knew they had risen pretty quick in popularity -the touring life had just been so busy that he hadn't really had the chance to read up on them. He had that excuse for himself, but it still wasn't an excuse he saw to greet them like one of the freshmen bands that still went unheard of.

"Their fact sheets for your road crew are right in front of you on the desk underneath Cinderella's." Doc pointed to a folder on the desk. "You can look through it if you want -it doesn't have any major personal or legal information on it. Just make sure it gets to your roadies or to Rich like I told you -no exceptions. That has all their gear and roadcase tags and information on it. We've got three bands running together for weeks on end, and they're new to us, so we don't know how organized their crew is. If we don't have that, I'll bet you guys that one of the crews is going to pick up part of someone else's gear by mistake in the rushing around. So just that our guys have an easy way to find whatever and get it back to them if they screw up and hear someone say something's missing, that's it."

"I gotcha, Doc." Jon leaned back in the swiveling chair and casually spun it around once before picking up the stack. In zoning out, he hadn't heard Doc tell him to take the stack to the crew, but it was a song and dance he'd performed many times now and already saw coming.

He just hadn't always known what everything in it was for. Nor had he ever had much interest in what was inside to sneak a look for kicks. 

He hadn't anticipated finding himself still in the office looking through it after Doc left either, but now that he was curious to find out who he would be with, getting out of that office wasn't quite as pressing.

With the folder spread open, he slid over the first four fact sheets for Cinderella he knew well, and noted with a grin that there was a fifth.

_Rick's gonna be there for some of the larger shows; cool!_

But whether or not Rick Criniti would be along for the run was beside Jon's point, so he slid that sheet over and found the start of the stack for Winger -what he was looking for.

The first ID file boasted a photo that Jon would best make sure Richie Sambora didn't see if he didn't want playful teasing that they were copying each other's hairstyles, with the honey-colored blond, poodle-like curls he had. Though, Jon could make the argument that his curls weren't quite as tight as the ones in the photo, and that his potential doppelgänger in Winger was much more babyfaced with his rounded cheeks, taller, and slimmer. For lack of a better description, he looked like a nervous Golden Retriever that was one startle away from tucking his tail between his legs. He might as well have been trying to disappear in his hair and looked far too innocent for the context he stood in -but Jon had a feeling he had a few dirty thoughts in his head that would prove otherwise.

Jon looked below the photo to his general information he had access to -mainly the information his gear would be labeled with, should the wrong crew accidentally pick it up when they were traveling together and need to identify it. He was able to take from it that he played guitar, and his name was Reb Beach. In reality, he figured Reb was likely a nickname for something else not included in the information they had. He would have to meet Reb in person before considering if he was the type who would get riled up if he asked just what it was short for.

He turned to the next page. This ID photo showed another tall figure, but one with a build not as slim as Reb's. He was lean, but he had wider set shoulders. In contrast to Reb, his hair was dark and full with frizzy curls that tried to cover his eyes, and it was hard to tell if his grin was rambunctiously playful, or simply looked that way due to the downward slant of his thick, dark eyebrows. Either or, Jon got a strong sense that he would be a fun one. He wouldn't be surprised if he would be the most likely to hang out between bands, or if the guys in Cinderella ended up liking him.

A further look through his gear listed told him that he played guitar and keyboard, and that his name was Paul Taylor. Two other names followed in parenthesis for older gear labels -"Horrors" and "Horowitz". 

_He's got a lot in common with Lemma,_ Jon thought to himself. If Paul's sense of humor was anything like that of David Bryan and they ended up spending time with all three bands together, the two of them put together might just prove to be dangerous. Even more dangerous if they egged Richie on with them.

_One thing's for sure; it won't be boring with them._ That, Jon knew, and he'd still only seen half of them; he also knew it could get more interesting yet. He turned the page again, knowing he still needed to see a drummer, a bassist, and a singer. Since there were only four of them, the latter had to be taken on along with one of the former two, and Jon suspected the singing duties were more likely to be shared with the bass.

The next fact sheet ID showed a man who appeared to have a much smaller build than his previous two bandmates. Like Paul, he had dark hair and frizzy bangs over his eyes, but his curls were much looser and didn't seem to stand up on end. He had the sweetest smile, and a hint of weariness in his eyes. Jon could easily figure that he was the adult of the group. Possibly older than the rest too, as he didn't have the same babyfaced features, but Jon didn't doubt he wasn't still plenty playful and energetic if he was in a newer band of its type.

He was their drummer. Rod Morgenstein. Some of his gear ID suggested old labels from The Dixie Dregs, and the lightbulb switched on as all the ends came together with the familiar name. He was practically a veteran to touring then -even more than Jon with the huge status he held. If there was likely to be a down to Earth person of them to get to know, he would easily place his bet on Rod.

With one last page, Jon slipped it out from under Rod's. This had to be their singer and bassist.

He was slightly taller than Rod with an athletic build -muscular, but not excessively so. Loose, dark brown curls framed his face in a way that accentuated his cheekbones, which were the right shape to make him have an impish, baby-faced appearance, even with stubble lining his jaw. His eyebrow slant offset any innocence, giving him a naughty and impish look that was much more intense than Paul's.

But most notable to Jon was the playful, suggestive spark in his eyes and his bright smile that he could not find any better word to describe -cheesy as he felt the term was -other than dazzling. There was something familiar about it. Too familiar. Especially paired with the assertive posture Kip took -even for an ID photo, he leaned casually onto one leg and placed a hand on his non-weight-bearing hip that consequently stuck out and gave some perspective of his athletic build below his waist before the photo cut off. Jon had seen that stance and that smile somewhere before.

The chances weren't bad that he in fact might have. Jon had had plenty of small, obscure bands open shows at smaller venues, and there were plenty of other bands of all kinds of sizes with fast-changing lineups he'd played with too. It was possible he could have seen Kip just about anywhere; it was possible he could have played with another band at which he was there one night, and played with that same band three months later and Kip wouldn't have been there anymore.

There was something special about Kip though, and that narrowed down the possibilities. At the very least, he'd had a conversation with him backstage or something of the sort -and he knew he'd had a few experiences go beyond that with musicians he'd met. Still, he didn't remember any singing bassists, and he didn't know if Kip might have been playing a different instrument prior to his time in Winger. There were too many factors to chase down at once, especially trying to place Kip out of the context he'd found him in.

_I've seen you before. Don't remember where and when, but I know I have._

Jon flinched when he realized as he studied the photo and got lost in digging through his thoughts, he'd subconsciously sneaked his index finger across the photo as if he could reach in and stroke it through Kip's hair. It looked soft, even with the poor photo quality.

_Alright, that's enough._ Whenever it was, it wasn't coming to Jon, and probably wouldn't while he was staring at fact sheets in an office of all places. Besides that, he had things to get done in the short time he had left at home before he had two more weeks out with Skid Row, and _then_ he would arrive in Florida and face Kip in person.

Oh well. He had two weeks until they got to Tallahassee. Plenty of time for it to come back to him, and if it didn't, surely a good look in person rather than on a grainy ID photo would tell him. At least that was what Jon hoped.


	2. Prologue 2: Roll On Down the Highway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While stuck on the bus following the first night with all three bands together, Jon starts to get a hunch on a past encounter, and the implications of it aren't letting him rest easily. Meanwhile, all seems fine in the Winger camp -except when Rod notices that Kip looked a little uneasy with that one joke he and Paul made about hot frontmen.

Jon could have sworn that he would lose his mind before they made it to Miami. 

The drive -which by the map was eight and a half hours in theory -dragged out forever. Longer than it should have, even with the extra time added for rest stops, and the ridiculous amount of morning traffic the buses got stuck in along I-10 East on the way back to the coast, which was now being put to shame by all the traffic going into big attraction cities along 95 South.

He'd fallen asleep in the traffic leaving Tallahassee sometime after 5:00 in the morning, after having had a heck of a time trying to fall asleep while thinking about Kip.

If Jon had had a vague feeling two weeks ago, he had a strong one now after seeing Kip on his way offstage. What bugged him was that he hadn't been able to place him before their first night together, and worse; a few in-person looks backstage hadn't helped make the connection like he'd been certain it would.

Chalking it up to trying not to look long enough to make Kip think he was staring was out of the question too. By now, Jon knew he had to have thought of his past encounter -and was just in denial as to who he was.

He woke up at noon, disappointed enough to curl up in his bunk and go back to sleep at the driver's warning that their travel time would easily be eleven hours -which was well-founded by the look out the window he caught of the Daytona Beach traffic they were crawling through. Now that he was waking up again an hour later to find that they were still crawling through Titusville because the connecting state highway going across to Orlando was backed up, he was too awake to go back to sleep and left to the mercy of his nagging thoughts. 

The frustration to move somewhere physically channeled itself in the need to get somewhere mentally instead, and Jon could have sworn there was a traffic jam in his head of all the countless people he must have run into in the past few years.

_Where do I know you from?_

There were a few images Jon held in his head, hazed over with time and too much of the wild rock and roll lifestyle passed in between. A few dark-haired guys between the countless groupies he'd spent time with. Three in particular as possibilities, but none of them were quite right.

He could write off one of the three right away. Jon hadn't gotten a name then, but he'd been unkind -so much that Jon had been glad to see him leave, and seeing Kip in passing, he knew that couldn't have been him. 

His singing voice wasn't familiar, but the flat, calming monotone Jon heard Kip using between his bandmates backstage did sound like something he'd heard before. It was just flat enough that he could decide for certain he wasn't just noticing a resemblance to Jeff LaBar's monotone, which Jon heard quite often. Kip's was softer, yet more confident at the same time. Different for sure, and he'd heard it at some point.

There were two other possibilities Jon could think of -two guys with hair dyed jet black at that time -and had one of them had a speaking voice that flat?

There was that one night he'd spent with one of Alice Cooper's short-term bass players. Jon had a hunch, and he couldn't decide whether he still wasn't seeing enough resemblance, or if he was just in denial of what he'd be facing, should he have found it to be correct.

He'd been energetic and confident. Not as confident as Kip seemed to be backstage, but Jon knew how taking on the role of a frontman could do a thing or two to how one projected himself. Jon remembered a low, flat voice just above a whisper, and jet black hair that was surprisingly softer than it had looked under the stage lights. Unlike Kip now, he'd had clean-shaven baby-faced features, but that could have easily changed in time. And had Kip indeed been that bass player, he wouldn't have been wearing fake blood around his mouth like he had then. And maybe the blood had been the thing to make the teeth he'd bared evilly that night look unusually bright, or perhaps they'd just been that way, and that was why the much more friendly smile Jon had seen as Kip ran around backstage with his bandmates looked like something from a past encounter.

Maybe Kip would have come to him if that were the case, but Jon had screwed that one up, and not even realized it until last night, rolling out of Tallahassee when his mind first settled on that bass player he'd seen back in '86. That bass player clad in all black with baby-faced features, bright blue eyes, and surreally perfect teeth...

_I had wondered what he would have looked like smiling that night too,_ Jon ceded to himself. _I could imagine it looking like that._

It was probably more than enough to draw a conclusion, but Jon was self-admittedly stubborn, and his denial wasn't going anywhere yet. He wanted to catch a view from backstage and see Kip in action. If he could see just how Kip acted onstage, he knew that would give him answer enough.

But they weren't going on tonight -he had another night to wait through, and he couldn't see Kip at all as long as they stayed stuck on a bus rolling down the highway at a speed a sloth could have outrun. If they didn't get out of their current delay and to the hotel soon, they'd end up catching afternoon rush hour going into Miami too, Jon realized with a moan, standing up to walk the length of the bus aisle a couple of times in hopes it would alleviate the intense need he felt to move someplace already.

As they traveled further south, the air was getting hotter and thicker by the minute. Jon could imagine the bus struggling to push through an invisible barrier of humidity. And with each southbound mile they crawled, the stifling atmosphere turned what started out feeling like a small jolt of unpleasant realization into a growing weight on his heart that he couldn't get rid of, no matter how many times he paced through that bus.

At the back of the three-bus line stuck in traffic, with Cinderella's bus separating them from Bon Jovi's, the traffic restlessness was also building on the Winger bus as everyone was waking up.

Kip had only been up and dressed for a mere half hour, and was on his way back from checking with the driver at the front on where they were and how much longer they had until arrival. As he came through the tight doorway, he was met by Reb stumbling out of the lavatory, still in the loose t-shirt and shorts he slept in and with tangled, messy hair hanging over his squinted eyes.

He clutched his chest in mock horror and trotted one pace backward to lean flat against the wall, grabbing for the wall for dear life with his other hand, wide-eyed and gaping.

"Some major turn of the universe has occurred and Reb is up before 2:00 on his own!"

"Not by choice." Reb's face settled in a pout, and along with his disheveled appearance and the groggy mumble he spoke in, it was enough that Kip had to laugh.

"First it was too hot, so I woke up to kick off the covers and get some water to cool off with, which was a mistake. Because once I was up, I couldn't get back to sleep no matter how hard I tried, and then I had to get up again whether I wanted to or not," he complained. "I give up! I just wanted to sleep as late as possible, but forget it. I'm up for the day."

"You're up for the day before 2:00 o'clock, and in a _very_ pleasant mood about it," Kip added flatly, pulling himself off the wall. He grinned when that earned him a sleepy giggle out of Reb. "Lucky for you, the length of this drive got us an off night. We might actually go to sleep before 3:00 in the morning and get some extra rest. And Paul and Rod have already been up for awhile, so I think we're all kind of having one of those days if it makes you feel any better."

"No, even worse." Reb leaned against the wall and closed his eyes like he wanted to go back to sleep right there. "I don't like that. I know it's probably nothing, but for all of us to wake up early and not fall asleep again doesn't sit right -I don't want to go there, but if we end up dealing with some sort of trouble at some point this week..."

"Well, if we do, then we'll figure it out. No need in worrying about it before it happens when we don't know what it is." 

Inside, Kip pushed down just the faintest feeling he had of his own that trouble was in fact brewing. He was aware of couple of things that could end up haunting him, considering their current arrangement, but it wasn't anything troublesome.

He had some unanswered questions from the past that were so open in nature, they could have really been founded on anything he wasn't aware of. For once, Kip was more inclined to leave them unanswered and hope that the past would just stay quietly in the past, and that all would proceed as if one experience he'd lived had never happened. If it didn't, he just hoped it wouldn't present itself as something nasty. As of last night, he only had one little inkling that he might have a few things to deal with, but then it was gone, and he wasn't going to worry until he had real reason to.

Reb nodded in agreement.

"Rod and Paul have been up in the back lounge for a couple hours." Kip changed the subject, for Reb's good and his own. "If you're not gonna go back to bed, maybe we oughta go see what they're up to now that you're up and hang out together 'til we get there. We still got awhile."

Reb nodded, still not talkative beyond complaints in his waking state. Kip walked into the lounge with Reb on his heels, where Paul and Rod sat on the couch to the right of the path, having clearly abandoned their attempt to watch some cartoon on the TV that had a flickering picture, broken up by the shivering, grey lines of weak antenna signal. Paul was snickering, and with the way he was grinning and bouncing in his seat as he exchanged with Paul, Rod was amused by whatever it was they were talking about.

"Alright, you two are up to something without us," Kip scolded, "and this early in the day too. What's going on in here?"

"Oh, nothing; we weren't being good." Rod held a hand out and dragged it down through the air as if to knock the question down, which only got curiosity sparking in Kip's eyes, and succeeded in getting Reb to push his bangs out of his eyes so that he looked half-awake rather than like he was sleepwalking.

"Well, we need _some_ distraction from the heat," said Paul innocently. "Good morning, now that you've joined us. I see Reb just woke up, so welcome back to the world of living."

Reb unceremoniously flopped down on the couch on the other side of the path and pulled one knee up to his chest to rest his cheek on and not have to hold his head up.

"He's successfully been resuscitated, but he's not quite ready to come off the life support yet," Kip teased, settling down next to him. His playfully inquisitive grin did not go away before he looked back across to the other couch, and Paul began snickering again, knowing what was coming next.

"So, really, what _did_ we miss in here?"

"We're misbehaving," said Rod sheepishly. "We heard the crew's radio last night and we're being bad -it all started with making a crack at how 'Roll on Down the Highway' by Bachman Turner Overdrive vaguely sounds like 'We're an American Band' by Grand Funk Railroad if you listen close enough."

"Similar vocal style, and same key, minus a few different modal turns," Kip rationalized, gazing up to the ceiling and tapping his forefinger and thumb together to two distinctly different rhythms as he skimmed through the two songs in his head. "Especially on Grand Funk pushing more of a minor sound. Not that similar, but there are a few places I could hear the resemblance. Mostly the verses. Progression under the guitar solo on BTO comes close to matching the chorus for Grand Funk -it's most of the same progressions in different order." He nodded in concession.

"Same kind of chugging rhythm riff in places too." Reb looked confused. "I don't get what's bad about that."

Paul shrugged. "Maybe it's not as bad as Rod's making it out to be. We were just mentioning at how funny that is with those two songs, since Randy Bachman came out of The Guess Who -just about the most anti-American band if you take one of their hits seriously!"

_"American woman, stay away from me!"_ Kip sang, nudging Reb to try and make him sing along, but Reb exhaustedly buried his face in a pillow instead.

"Man, Reb, you really don't function before 3:00 o'clock anymore," Paul laughed.

"I don't know. Did I to begin with?" To everyone else, his question was incoherent murmurs muffled in the pillow.

"Anyway, I'd like to know if Randy Bachman felt the same way Burton Cummings did, and if his sentiment on American women extend to all we American bands," Paul continued, struggling to talk through the urge to laugh more. "Because while that would be a little bit harsh, there's a tale about groupies, and well, if they're following us, I guess if we don't stay away, they don't stay away either!"

Kip lunged across the aisle and playfully smacked Paul in the arm. 

"Ow! What'd I do this time?!"

Flopping back down on the couch beside Reb, Kip mimed exasperation, tossing his head back and turning his wrist out to lay the back of his hand over his forehead. "Aw, Paul, and we're back on the back of the bus talk _again-_ "

"-while we're in the back of the bus, no less, and sitting on the couches where it all happens," Reb added, lifting his head from the pillow he'd balanced on his knees to grin ruefully, right before crashing back down in it.

"It's just now 2:00 o'clock and he's already got his mind in the gutter digging for trouble." Rod couldn't quite keep a grin out of his weary look. "That's alright, I'm right in it with him, and he's pulling Reb down in it too."

"What, he's not pulling me down in the gutter as well?" asked Kip. He twitched his eyebrows impishly as he got up and motioned like he was also about to smack Rod too, who then pretended to shrink against Paul's side.

"Your mind was already in the gutter before we came in here, and you know it." Reb reached up and tugged on the hem of Kip's t-shirt, forcing him to sit back down, which earned himself a hit to his own arm instead.

"Ouch!" He pretended to fall over sideways, kicking his feet up as he slid down to lie on his back on the seat of the couch.

"Hit me back," Kip challenged, motioning like he was going to do it again just to play with him. But Reb just shook his head and sat back up to huddle around the pillow again.

"Hit me back, or is it too early for that too?"

"Be glad. If any of us were like Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings, we might be hitting each other for real." Rod jumped back to misbehaving with Paul. "I think nowadays they'd both sooner tell each other to stay away than tell that to a groupie in the US. Kind of sad and funny at the same time when you think of it."

"They'd definitely tell us to stay away with the amount of girls following bands today, and even though we can't compare ourselves to some bands out there in terms of getting followed -like one traveling with us right now -we can't deny that either!" Reb began cracking up on the couch.

"But did the notorious American band Grand Funk claimed themselves to be really have a lot of American women following it?" Paul gave a naughty grin. "Maybe in those days the girls would rather chase after the Canadian guys if those were their options!"

Rod groaned, which made Reb crack up even harder at his reaction on top of the joke. Then Kip put his foot down.

"Alright, I learned bass to Grand Funk records, so I'm not gonna rag on them but so much."

"That's fair," agreed Paul. "I'll take that; that is fair."

"I'll still rag on The Guess Who and BTO and take a joke on myself, and I'm not saying you all can't joke on Grand Funk -I just won't go that far because I figure they deserve better from me." Now Kip was the one with a weary hint in his playful expression.

"Well, if anyone in this line of buses deserves the joke on them, it's Jon Bon Jovi," said Paul. "Not only does he get followed by girls, but there are plenty of guys who would send looks his way -if there was a guy who would be directly dangerous to Randy and Burt-"

"Actually, that's kind of funny, because when we were around the common backstage lounge outside the dressing rooms last night coming off so that Cinderella could go on, I think I saw Jon Bon Jovi gazing a bit in our direction," noted Rod. "For him of all people to do that -Kip, if there was still an argument out there, now you've officially hit the top hot-frontman ranks we used to joke about, when someone already there without argument is staring lovingly-"

Before anyone could notice that all the light vanished from Kip's smile, Paul held up his hands and his expression went deathly serious.

_"-Whoa!_ Actually, _none_ of us are gonna go there, guys," he warned. "We're _not_ gonna go there. Let's not."

On top of Paul's rare lack of humor, Reb's smile disappeared too. Rod looked between Paul's stony face, and Kip, who now looked nervous and relieved at the same time. He almost started to ask what they all knew that he didn't, but stopped short at just barely opening his mouth, deciding that it had to be a sensitive topic if it was something that Paul wouldn't make into fun and games. It was rare enough when Paul was the one reining him in rather than the opposite way around.

"Anyway, I'll bet The Guess Who and BTO would tell Bon Jovi as a whole to stay away and wouldn't dare tour with them, because they'll all have a whole line of girls waiting for them all the way back up the road to Jersey," said Reb, breaking the awkwardness by pulling it back to their original joke, and he sucked in his lips and stared as if to say silently that there was no argument against that conclusion.

Paul lost his playful resolve entirely then.

"Oh, take us back to New York, _please._ " He pulled his thin t-shirt away from his body and shook it to fan himself. "It's not even summer yet, we still have an hour further South to go, and it's already too hot."

"Don't complain now when we're gonna be playing outside in it tomorrow under lights. It's really the humidity on top of the heat that's gonna kill us," Rod figured.

"Paul, I'm from Colorado and you're from California. Something doesn't add up here," Kip chuckled from where he sat splayed out on the couch, trying to catch any draft of airflow he could from the bus air conditioner that could hardly keep up. "You should have been with Reb and I when we were moving in together. Now that actually was in the summer, but with everything we had to do in it, that was make-you-wanna-cry hot."

"I honestly don't think this is much worse," Reb agreed. "Playing is the only thing that really saves it from not being fun. At least everywhere else we're playing is North of here."

"It's only for a couple days," Rod added, trying to be positive with Reb. "Besides that, I survived going to school down here. It didn't kill me, so it's not that bad."

"Oh, it's gonna be so much easier for all of us once we're past Tampa. Rest of this stretch of tour will be easy, no worries for us-"

"Paul, you'd better knock on some wood!" scolded Rod, reaching over and rapping his knuckles hard on the wall panels of the bus, which may have had some thin, composite wood beneath the veneer. 

Reb promptly followed. "Just to be sure!"

"Yeah, let's not say that." Kip sat up straight and held his hands up so that he had no contact with anything but the surface under him, and nearly fell over sideways as the bus suddenly accelerated. "Look, I haven't entirely decided whether I believe all the superstition or not, but I wouldn't go that far. And definitely not when the bus just got up to speed!"

But whether it was the result of superstition and luck, or destined to happen anyway, the traffic backups and sheer Florida heat would end up being the least of Kip's concerns by the end of their next night onstage.

The least of his concerns, and the least of Jon's too.


	3. 1. You Know That I've Seen Your Face Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon finds Kip coming offstage in Miami, and finds their encounter as distant as the time passed since their first. Both find themselves looking the past straight in the face, with no way forward without looking back.

"Winger is coming off, Cinderella is going on, you guys are on in an hour tops; where is Jon?!"

Richard Bozzett was yelling as he ran around backstage, trying to make sure all was ready to go in the Bon Jovi camp.

Jon could hear him from where he'd tucked himself in the backstage tunnel that ran behind the wall separating the common area and hallway leading to the dressing rooms, and below the set of steps that led up to the actual stage. He'd ascended the steps for the show and watched from the wings, just out of sight from everyone except the stage crew along the back wall where cables ran from the cabinets and speakers. Now that it was over, he stood at the bottom of the stairs, where the backs of the amplifier stacks were just above his head in the passageway.

_Please, Rich, just wait a little longer -two minutes. It'll be quick. I'll be there; I promise._

He felt bad that disappearing from the band's dressing room and not being visible in the lounge was now leading to panic over where he'd been for so long without telling anyone, but he had far more pressing worries on his mind and far more important things he needed to do _right now_ while he had the adrenaline-driven rush of confidence, and before he could sit down and berate himself too much.

Jon knew he was going to berate himself anyway tonight, regardless of what else happened, and with each call from Richard looking for him, he felt the urge to shake off an invisible, guilty weight that he did not need added on top of what he had to deal with already.

It had been his hope to find a place to watch the stage where he wasn't in need of guards or distracting from Winger's performance, and this venue's backstage tunnel had served his purpose for it quite well. When he'd hidden away, he'd planned to watch the first song of the set. Maybe two, if that was as long as it took to see the band do introductions.

Now, he had extracted himself from his hiding spot in the tunnel just over an hour later as the band was preparing to exit the stage.

While he hadn't expected to be caught up and stay there the whole time, he had come to expect in the minutes before the first chords of the night were struck that his sensation of denial would be ripped away from him in a less than gentle manner. He had been correct.

He'd known well enough, though there was still the slightest chance otherwise when Kip strutted out onstage with his bass.

But when Jon saw Kip drop down to the ground with a spin -looking as though he was kneeling, but never once losing contact with his pointed toes on the ground as he held his low position, then springing back up effortlessly a moment later with another spin and lift of his bass in time to the music, he knew exactly where he'd seen that move before.

By the time he'd pulled himself out of the past in his mind which he'd nearly forgotten, the last song of the set was halfway through.

Richard continued calling around the common backstage lounge. "Tico, _have you seen Jon?"_

"No, sir. He disappeared right before Winger went on; I thought he went to give Tom a pep talk -you know how he is."

Richie jumped through the doorway of the band's dressing room to appear suddenly beside Tico. "That's right, because Tom is the shyest frontman there is. He needs some lessons from Jon -you'd think his record deal would be enough of a request!"

Richard rubbed his temples and sighed.

"Well if he did, they're about to go on, so he'd better be back in our dressing room in the next ten minutes. If he's not, one of you guys need to go hunt him down, because I've already said I'm not playing these kinds of games right before show time," he scolded. "And tell him to drink some water with whatever else he's had to drink, if he hasn't already. The weather here might not be rough on his voice, but it will be hard on his body. And everyone else's too. All of you guys had better be keeping yourselves hydrated. I mean it; I don't care what all your other priorities are or what order they're in, but hydration had better be at the top of that list tonight, because I'm not carrying your ass offstage if you pass out!"

Richard's threat was loud enough that it carried across the divider to where Jon could hear it in the backstage tunnel and question if he wouldn't pass out for entirely different reasons. He wasn't the only one in that tunnel who heard it either.

_Oh, trust me, I already know,_ Kip thought to himself as he trotted uncomfortably down the steps from the stage to access the tunnel, slightly behind his bandmates after hanging back to greet the fans along the forgotten corners of the stage.

He'd learned well enough with Alice that not only did sweat not evaporate at all when the air was already saturated, but under the hot stage lights, there was no cooling effect from being wet either. The perspiration soaked up the excess heat from the lights like a sponge and kept it sticking it to him. Tonight was one of those inevitable nights when it didn't matter what he did before the show to prevent it; he was leaving the stage soaking wet, too thirsty to swallow without pain, and lightheaded enough that one more twirl with his bass might have landed him on the stage floor. A dull ache was already setting in his forehead, and despite how the sweat was causing his leather pants to rub painfully with each stride -enough that he wanted to pull them off right then and there if it were physically possible -he also wanted to get in the shower with his clothes on and wait until he was cooled down to fight with getting them off. And he was all but on a one-track mind to doing just that.

All but on a one-track mind, until it derailed when someone grabbed him by the shoulder -too firmly to be a mistake, and with fingers too long and callused to be from an out of control groupie.

Turning around, he found himself face to face with Jon Bon Jovi. Almost as it had been three years ago, except that he looked stricken rather than seductive. And though there was no mirror or other reflective surface in the dark of the backstage tunnel to confirm it, Kip was sure the same was true for himself.

_Oh boy, here we go._

"Jon." Kip nodded his greeting in a low voice, just above a whisper as he tried not to gag -not on saliva, but the lack thereof. "I guess you were back here-"

"It's a hell of a show you put on," said Jon. "You made it quicker than I expected, and that was already a high one."

"Not the way I expected then, but good enough for me." Kip smirked with his tongue-in-cheek pun, then squinted. "Not good enough if you're trying to seduce me _tonight_ -for just a few reasons. What brings you back here to me anyway?"

"I'm not asking anything of you or looking to -I just wanna talk to you and clear things up, if it's the only thing we can do together."

Kip raised an eyebrow and shifted his weight onto one leg to stand, putting his hands on his hips as he did, and if that wasn't a look Jon had also seen him make before -if less sassy and more expectant this time.

"I'm not sure what to say without sounding like a jerk. But whether you'd take it or not, I owe you a pretty serious apology, Kip. Not just for not sticking to my word, but for forgetting someone I saw enough in to call special -like you."

Kip tried not to look as conflicted or exasperated as he felt, between the sweltering heat, being spent post-performance, and the mix of thoughts swirling around fast enough to make his head spin. He wasn't angry or repulsed by Jon; he didn't hate him or wish him harm -but he didn't know what kind of light to see him in. He didn't want to be unreceptive either. His feelings with Jon were just more complicated than what he could make sense of on the spot -even in the best time possible. And while he wasn't sure what that was, Kip did know that _this_ was not it in any world.

"Well, I'm not gonna argue with that. I can't really tell you what I think, but I'm not holding a grudge, so you don't need to worry about me plotting revenge while we're together, if that's what you're afraid of."

"Gee, I didn't think of it that way, but I couldn't blame you if you were." Jon squeezed his eyes shut and silently berated himself for his lack of thinking before jumping in. 

_This is so uncomfortable -for both of us. Why did I think talking to him now right after the show would be a good idea?_

"God, Kip; I'm sorry. I really did mean to get back to you after that; not forget -I'm sorry."

"Look, Jon. Years have passed since then." Kip gazed to the ceiling while finding his words. "I'm already over it -at least I am to my knowledge. We'd barely just met each other, so there's no point in apologizing over and over for what's already done and settled. This isn't a great place -if you wanna talk, how about tomorrow afternoon, or at the hotel in Orlando when we know we'll have some extra time?"

"Jon, LAST CALL!" Richard's voice boomed, and this time, he sounded pissed. That was intimidating for Jon just as much as it was enough to really make him feel like shit, because Richard Bozzett was probably as patient as a tour manager came, and he put up with a lot from them. He didn't deserve this added stress, but leaving now without at least coming to a decision to meet again -one that would be impossible to forget -would be too unfair to Kip on top of their past.

"Maybe before we both get into trouble too?" Kip shifted his weight to his other leg and flexed his knee with a wince. _That seemed peculiar..._

"Yeah, um -Orlando." Jon nodded. "I think that's gonna be our best bet -find me backstage in Tampa and I'll tell you the room number I'll have there. If I don't come to you at the time we agree, you can come find me and call me out for being an idiot and make the call whether we ever speak again."

It was almost enough for Jon to see Kip's mouth twitch up in a smirk, but it disappeared as they both heard the next bit of commotion outside the tunnel.

"That's it! Richie, you go look backstage; Tico, you check in Cinderella's room. David, if Winger is back to their room, ask them if they've seen Jon..."

Everything further drowned out as Cinderella hit their first notes at the audience went wild.

Kip sighed heavily. "You'd better split. I'd better too. We'll talk about it in Orlando. How about before the show then since we don't have a long drive in, or maybe the 10th -that's the day after if I'm remembering right -at 5:00? We should both be up by then, easy."

"Yeah, that'll work. I'll be there," said Jon. "I promise, whether you believe me or not." Kip looked so exasperated post-performance that Jon almost wanted to ask to see him off to his dressing room. But he had looked perfectly bright and energetic until the end of the show, regardless of whatever discomfort he was in, and he'd been perfectly fine coming offstage the first night, which was also considerably warm. At the last second, Jon stopped himself. Kip was overwhelmed already, and he supposed that following him now might make him feel worse, or take him back to the past to walk off together.

So he hung back when Kip continued on his way, just when he heard Richie call out to him in his faked, raspy and playful voice.

"Alright, Jonny... Bozzett sent me to find you... Ooooh, you're in _trouble_ now!"

_I really am too._ Not only did Jon have a mess to sort out that he hadn't bargained for when they'd gone through the booking process, but he had to wait two agonizing days before he could get anywhere on it. Though, that too, was fair in its own way. 

_If I left Kip hanging for three years without thinking about it, he deserves to tell me to wait a couple of days._ Jon turned around and ran back out into the common area before Richie could get in the tunnel.

"Where were you?!" Richie demanded. "Getting it on in the tunnel with someone before the show even happens?"

Jon could only shrug his shoulders to that as he followed Richie back to the dressing room.

By that point, Kip was already to the door of his own, simply questioning whether or not to trust Jon.

_Well, I'll see if he sticks to meeting in Orlando to judge that first, and then I'll go from there._

The first sight he was greeted with was Rod on a chair on the far end of the room, fighting to pull off his clothes, which had only stuck more to him as the result of sitting down to perform.

Past the chair on the floor was Paul, who had stripped off his clothes, donned a towel to keep his modesty, and was sprawled out on the tile floor, trying to soak the cool sensation out of the hard, smooth surface.

Kip cast a weary side-eye to Rod as he limped up to the drink table at the back of the dressing room, snatched the first cup of water in his reach, and proceeded to chug half of it before stopping to breathe. He didn't care that it was way too fast to do any good for the water loss. His first priority was ridding himself of his painfully dry throat.

"Little rough tonight?" asked Rod.

"More than I expected." Kip closed his eyes and slowly exhaled, lifting the water cup again.

"Drink the rest of that slow before you wind up getting sick," Rod warned. "Or before you pass out holding your breath. You're looking a little dizzy."

"You sound like Alice when you talk like that," Paul murmured from the floor. At that, having taken one more swallow of a more reasonable quantity, Kip resorted to dumping the rest of the cup over his head and refilling it.

Rod nudged Paul in the ribs with his toe. "Go take your shower."

Paul made a faked cry sound to make his point and clutched his chest dramatically. "Don't wanna move," he moaned. "It's _so far away!"_

" _You_ sound like Reb being dramatic when he doesn't want to get out of bed to go to the bathroom," teased Rod. "Hey, after all those references you made to the back of the bus routine yesterday, you'd better clean yourself up for whoever'll think to head our way after Bon Jovi gets offstage."

Paul groaned, pulled himself up from the floor, and grabbed his shower kit on the way around the corner.

Kip reluctantly set his water down before he could drink it too fast again. "I don't know; if a shower doesn't make me feel any better, I might just call it a night." 

"You and I both. I give up," Rod moaned, heading off to the shower with his shirt still on, having already used up his patience fighting to get his leather pants off.

"I'm not even gonna _try."_ Kip only stopped by his luggage to kick his shoes off and grab his towel and shower kit before following him fully-clothed.

"Yeah, Reb did that."

"Look," said Reb defensively over the spray of water from behind the shower curtain, "Usually I do try, but... not tonight!"

"And we're not saying anything against it either." As he turned the water on full blast, Kip sardonically mused to himself how most people would have far different reasons for needing a cold shower after a run-in with Jon Bon Jovi, and at one time in the past, he'd been in that boat.

And maybe he would be in that boat again by the end of the tour. He wouldn't write it off. But he didn't see it happening anytime soon with the discomfort he felt as the past now stared him down straight in the eyes, and Kip supposed it was going to take more than a physical encounter to get rid of discomfort and trust issues from it.

At least there was some comfort in the chance of a simple start in Orlando. It was just too early to tell what might happen beyond that, and he was far too tired tonight to conjecture that.

............

"What did I tell you guys?" Richard Bozzett sighed, standing just within the door of the dressing room as Bon Jovi returned hours later, following their performance.

"I know, I know..."

Jon doubted it was entirely heat and dehydration, but he'd made it four steps into the dressing room before a wave of dizziness hit him so hard that he saw stars and went right down on the floor. Now, not only did he have to deal with an unhappy tour manager because he'd gone AWOL backstage, but because he'd collapsed and given him cause for concern too.

David walked over next to Jon, holding a deadpan stare at Richard up until the moment he was next to the former. At which point he made begging hands and feigned puppy eyes.

_"Please,_ don't tell me 'I told you so'!" he whimpered with a voice an octave higher than usual, right before he rolled his eyes back and pitched himself into a quick step backward to sit down hard and fall back lying on the floor. He kicked his legs up before settling in his sprawl. It was an imitation of the kind of faint that only happened in cartoons -a hard fall back with feet flying up.

Jon huffed out a weak laugh.

"You guys are crazy." Richard shook his head. "We're camped out here until everything's packed; drivers are meeting us back here in the morning and we take off. Don't care if you guys stay up in here and do lord knows what; just know we have another show tomorrow night right after this, so make sure to rest up and recover, and make sure you're on the bus at 9:00, because we're supposed to leave at 9:30, and there's no reason with leaving that late why you can't be on the bus."

"Be on the bus, or _on_ the bus?" David snickered from beside Jon on the floor.

For some reason, Jon got the image of the whole band standing on the roof of the bus with their instruments, and it brought such a welcome, brief distraction from his troubles that he howled out with laughter. But like all good things, it couldn't last. Especially with the kind of night it was.

"Jon, I don't think you realize it, but you're on thin ice," Richard scolded. "Don't pull a stunt like that again unless you tell someone where are you gonna be, and when are you gonna be back. And by the way, whether you heard it or not, my condition applies back here too. If you wanna lie down on the couch, you'll have to find a way there yourself, because I'm not helping you to it."

With that he left.

"Man, are you sick?" asked David. "You're in rare form tonight; he's got his panties wedged way up his ass, and that's not easy to do!"

"I'm actually not sure, Lemma." Jon rose unsteadily to his knees, and David helped him over to the couch.

"Richie already with some girls?" he asked.

"Yeah, or he might have been trying to get Rich off your case. Unless he decided to give you a hard time for the fun too."

Jon reached for the drink table by the couch. At first he grabbed the first alcoholic beverage in his reach out of habit, but tonight, it turned bitter in his mouth with the first swig, and he found himself tossing it to the garbage can, before taking a cup of water instead.

He'd just finished it and allowed himself to lie back on the couch -unwind some from the tense night it had been -when the dressing room door swung open, and four girls started the invasion of the dressing room, making a beeline for him. They were hardly the beginning; odds were good there would be at least twenty running through within the next few minutes, whether they got to him or not.

_So that's how it happens, huh?_ Jon thought to himself as one of the girls all but threw herself against him. _Just move along one to the next, keep moving and forget any of it happened, until you go into autopilot and forget the one you didn't want to forget._

Without a doubt -as he knew well from his countless nights on the road, they'd follow him to the shower when he finally did feel his legs steady and his head clear enough to get there -or they'd support him on his way there -and then they'd be onto the next celebrity they could find, just as he would be onto the next town.

He remembered it all. He could see it in his head now -far clearer now that he'd spoken to Kip again. He remembered the black leather and fake blood vampire attire, the wild facial expressions and sharp eyes, and the low, soothing, flat voice that seemed to contrast it all. Jon remembered asking Kip's name, but it occurred to him he'd never spoken it that night, as in the noise of everything else taking place in the venue, post-performance, he'd barely been able to hear it -and not well enough to trust that he had it right. His still-overbearing bravado that came with having just risen out of greenhorn status wouldn't allow him to risk messing it up, or suffer the humiliation of asking Kip to repeat it.

He wondered if maybe if he had, he might have remembered. It wouldn't have been like the girls who gave their names whether he was listening for them or not.

He remembered being taken aback by how strong, aggressive, yet perhaps even a bit playful in the act Kip was. The snarling and baring of his teeth -the fake blood really had added to that act. Jon still was at a loss as to whether it was how Kip was at all times, or if he was wound up by the show and acting a character. It was only after they'd rested with each other for some time afterward -after both felt their energy crash -that Kip sleepily spoke of how one day he wanted to be in a band of his own and use the material he'd written in session and on the road which Alice couldn't use.

And Jon remembered taking the phone number on a slip of paper, stained red from the fake blood around Kip's mouth that had gotten on their hands and just about everywhere else in their passionate moment together, and swearing that he'd call within the next week as he folded it up and turned it over in his hand. Saying that Kip was something special -one day, he too would rise to the high ranks -and how he wouldn't leave him looking dirty and used after one night. He in fact fancied him, and wouldn't mind seeing if there was more than Kip starting a project of his own that might happen.

Somehow, perhaps the next night had been even busier than usual, or perhaps he'd been tired -whatever could have happened on those endless nights that ran together -and the promise had slipped from his mind. It occurred to Jon now that he'd never seen that paper with the number again after that night. At some point, it must have fallen through his fingers or dropped out of his belongings to lay dirty and forgotten on some street or parking lot -just as dirty and forgotten as he'd left Kip.

And little did Jon and Kip know that as they boarded their buses for the night hours later when the venue went quiet and deserted, bound for Tampa when morning came, and a heat that was still plenty high but possibly bearable, they were both conflicted by the same thoughts. When they'd last been together and what they'd done then. Equal fear and fascination if the concept were even possible now. The realization that even if they opted not to talk, there was no possible way to ignore or avoid each other, being together for a whole month with a long distance in between. And the road maps they'd looked at with their drivers of their paths up I-95 that put into quantity just _how_ long.

_Oh, shit... Now what?_


	4. 2. There's Nowhere to Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Unable to hide his dilemma and no longer able to ignore the past, Jon talks to Richie about what has happened and what is to come with Kip while on the road to Tampa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://youtu.be/3hucRcXipwI For those who don't know the Uncle Richie reference. Great laugh and backstage antics; highly recommend.

It wasn't until mid-morning that all the gear had been packed up and the buses took off for Tampa, allowing the crew a rare, longer rest ahead of a much shorter drive in to the next stop.

Jon woke up when the bus started rolling, after a few hours of fitful sleep with the overwhelming reality of just how much of a mess he'd gotten himself into hitting him at once -between cornering Kip and wherever their agreement to talk might go on top of what had already happened. Now at 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon with everyone else waking up if they hadn't already, he'd given up getting any more rest and resorted to just trying to make sense of how he'd managed to forget, how he hadn't known for sure sooner, how he'd thought talking to Kip backstage was a better idea than before soundcheck or door opening, and how to live down a month on the road with him.

He didn't know what to think. Or, actually, he did know _one_ thing to think, regardless if everything else was truly up in the air.

"God, I'm an idiot," Jon groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Jesus Christ."

Richie looked at him from across the aisle separating their bunks and raised his eyebrows.

"Man, I'm trying to decide whether I even wanna know or not." He grinned mischievously. "What's happening with you?"

"I am the world's biggest airhead," Jon lamented from where he sat on the edge of his bunk. He sat with his side against the headboard and had the curtain pulled right up to his other side -and tucked under his arm so that just his legs, shoulders, and head stuck out from his one truly private space on this particular bus.

"Aw, come on. Let's not put it that badly," Richie assured jokingly as he left his reclined position and moved to sit on the edge of his own bunk, without pulling his curtain across half his body. "How about you at least back off to being in the top ten?"

Unfortunately, his humor just wasn't doing it for Jon the way it normally did.

"Very funny."

Richie's smile disappeared and his playful spirits seemed to deflate. He curled his index finger and placed it below his lower lip.

"Hmmm. _Do_ you want to talk about it, or no? You can't tell me it's nothing."

"Mmmm," Jon hummed, bending face down over his lap and holding the sides of his head to brace himself, elbows on his knees.

_"Jon?"_ Richie drew it out in a slow, rising pattern so it sounded more like 'jawwwnnnn'.

"Don't dig."

"How am I digging?" Richie lunged like he was going to jump off his bunk. "I can show you digging and dig you out of that bunk you're hiding in-"

"Richie, I'm working," Jon muttered darkly. "I'm working, so you'd better not fuckin-"

Richie leaned forward so that he had clearance of the bunk to sling both his hands out to his sides forcefully. "What kind of work are you doing this time? Or are you just saying that now to tell me to leave you alone -which Jonny, you know you could just say that and it'd be a lot easier-"

Jon sighed and took one hand from the side of his head to tap pointedly at his temple with his index finger.

"You're thinking?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"What about?" Richie bugged his eyes and sprang his maniacal grin to accompany his raspy voice imitation. "Come on, Jonny; tell Uncle Richie all about it!"

"Oh no, you're gonna start that one up again..." Jon pretended to plug his ears, but he couldn't hide wanting to laugh, even though he couldn't quite make it happen.

Richie turned serious. "Maybe it'll help you think about it if you tell me. You know I won't tell anyone else if you don't want me to -well, at least no one outside of who's on this bus. I won't promise to not let it slip to the guys eventually, but I'll at least keep it between us for a couple of days."

"You and your big mouth," Jon snorted. He sat up to face Richie. "Alright, I'll tell you, but you're toast if word of this _does_ go outside of anyone on this bus for now. If anyone asks about me, _keep your big mouth shut."_

"So..." Richie waited.

"So, we're with Kip Winger now."

"Got a crush?" Richie didn't smile, but he couldn't quite achieve a fully serious tone.

"Worse than that; I've seen him before."

"Uh-oh." This time, he did sound serious. "Did you act on him then?"

"Yeah, I spent a night with him." Jon retreated back in his bunk, so Richie could only hear, and not see him.

"It didn't end well." Richie pursed his lips contemplatively. "At least that's what I'm guessing, since you're doing a good impression of being in a confession booth."

Jon sighed from behind his curtain. "No, it went fine. Back then, it did. It was what I did after he was gone that didn't end well. And trying to talk last night didn't end too well either."

"Aha! That's why you were creeping around the backstage stairs when Rich was getting ready to pop a vein! Did you find him?"

A visual wasn't necessary for Jon to imagine Richie's face lighting up and him sitting up straighter -especially with what sounded like his hands clapping together as he started his excited exclamation.

"Yeah, but we didn't say much, and while he was pretty quiet and tired out, I know better -I'm not completely stupid. It's not good, and that's putting it more than lightly."

"What did you do?"

"Back then, or last night? I'll say both anyway, but..." Jon shifted himself back to the edge of his bunk in the open, figuring if he was going to be truthful, he'd best do it face-to-face. There wasn't going to be a curtain to hide behind when he talked to Kip.

"I told him I loved him -that he was special. Remember that night we were with Alice Cooper? How we were in a hotel, but I stayed out on the bus half the night? We were together then. And he gave me his number with the promise I'd call him. Well, I forgot, and I didn't even remember his name -I didn't remember until last night, and..."

"And?" Richie nodded and waved him on, encouraging him. "Spit it out -why were you hiding from us last night?"

"...and I sort of panicked, guess I didn't really think it over as well as I could have, and I waited to grab him backstage. I think that was one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life, and judging by the look on his face, I don't think he felt any different."

"A shame with that; he is good looking -he could easily stand next to you and not get forgotten by everyone else." Richie raised an eyebrow, and Jon realized he wasn't saying it to joke around this time. "Something more than that happened -did you get it on with him that night in any way?"

Jon blushed, but didn't try to dance around it.

"Yeah, pretty significantly. Not until after I promised to call him either, and that it wouldn't end there, and I don't think it would have happened if he'd expected it to end the way it did."

"Ooh, that's nastier than I thought." Richie winced in unison with Jon, and then something sparked in his eyes. "Wait a minute -with Alice? -was he that baby-faced guy in all the black leather -the one with the really bright teeth? He had that fake blood around his mouth that night that made 'em really stand out, since he kept doing that evil look?"

"Don't dig, Richie. Please, don't dig. Unfortunately, yes."

"Aw, man -I remember that too. Hard to believe how he looked pretty good then and turned into a heartbreaker like you. And I remember that was the one you said you were serious about getting back with the next day too. I didn't even realize you didn't ever call him. Man, I gotta wonder if any of us remember just how many groupies were there that night to distract you from calling-"

Jon snorted and buried his face in his hands again. He was smiling uncomfortably, and contemplating heavily whether he wanted to laugh or cry, even though he didn't feel physically able to do either.

He had just started to settle for a pathetic attempt at a pained laugh, when Richie lit up with another thought.

"Hey, was that night with him before or after you met Tom?"

_Do I wanna know where you're trying to take that, Richie?_ He was being hypersensitive about it, and he knew he was, but after last night, Jon wasn't in the mood. He looked up from his lap and glared.

"Okay, now you're digging a hole over your head, and you're about to end up stuck there if you keep going. _After._ And even if it was before, it wouldn't matter. Tom's a great guy, and he has a big heart, but I don't see him that way, and you already know that." Jon aggressively pulled back his bunk curtain and flopped back on his pillow, lying in his back with his knees bent at sharp angles to plant his feet solidly on the bed and dig his heels in to release frustration. "Don't even _try_ to play _that_ game with me, Richie."

Richie looked taken aback. "Alright, alright. That went too far -hey, don't do that. You're gonna tell me not to dig and then go and do _that?"_

Jon stopped with his heels, but didn't get off his back.

"It's worse than I thought; I didn't mean it like that. But hey, you still could have gotten distracted just doing all you could to set those guys up with a record deal, and then following them to make sure they were starting out good."

"I could have," Jon sighed. He felt like throwing a tantrum, especially now that he'd let himself snap at Richie and start digging a hole of his own -inside the bottom of the one he already had dug without even realizing it. He tried to shake off the thought before he could end up buried under his own frustration -if anyone involved had the right to throw a tantrum, it was Kip. Not that Jon could even imagine it happening in the two times he'd been with Kip -two times that couldn't have been more different from each other.

"I'm just hoping it doesn't make Kip harbor any jealousy with Tom, or then it's really about to be a fun month -caught in a war between my brother and a guy I have it bad for."

"I don't think so -I saw Eric last night, and he made it sound like they're all pretty friendly between those two camps. Besides, Tom letting it come to a fight? -come on! So..." This time, Richie looked concerned when he paused, rather than smiling. "What are you gonna do?"

"Well, we agreed to talk in Orlando, so I guess the first thing to do is just tell him what happened -as honestly as I can with what I remember. I mean, I know there's a fair chance he's not gonna buy it and will never want to talk to me or see me again, but he deserves to know that much anyway."

"You mean he deserves to know you fucked up. And _how_ ," Richie specified. "As romantics put it, that way he's at least got some closure."

Jon groaned bitterly at not having a better way to put it himself aside from the cheesy term, and nodded.

"Got myself in trouble, and now I've got work to do."

"You're always working," Richie snorted. "But man, you really do have work to do this time. I'm glad it's not me, but I'll have your back if I can help you."

Without a word further, Jon pulled his curtain.

Richie was someone who Jon trusted enough to confide in, and he had more than a few reasons why he usually turned to him. Richie had a way of putting everything rough into a humorous perspective so that they could laugh over it and get relief from the stress of trying to sort it out. It helped Jon deal with whatever the problem of the day was without loosing his cool.

The problem with what he had now was exactly how close they were as friends. Richie would soon enough figure out that this was a more sensitive topic for Jon, and would sooner start trying to distract Jon entirely from the problem with his humor, rather than addressing the problem. Richie knew he sometimes had a big mouth, and more often than not he had no apologies in showing it by giving Jon a hard time for kicks. But he knew better than to let it run free when he could too easily cross the line of hurting Jon's feelings. Despite keeping a playful banter to keep him from crossing the line of stressing what he had to deal with into self-pity, Jon could already tell that Richie was beginning to shift gears to a more restrained mode.

He would end up needing someone other than Richie to help him beyond today, and as much as Jon hated to admit it, he knew he inevitably would need help. Tico wasn't big on drama and feelings outside of whole-band matters or things that were his own to deal with, and Alec wasn't much better. He definitely broke the typical role of a bassist as being the peacekeeper. Without Richie, Jon was only left with David to turn to, and while there was a chance he would resort to non-stop joking too, Jon would sooner try him before placing his burdens on Tom Keifer. Without a doubt, Tom would certainly know what to say -Jon always admired how grounded Tom could be out of the public eye -but Tom didn't need that kind of trouble when he had his own band to hold together. And if Tom was friendly with Kip, Jon didn't want to be the one to tip the scales when he'd already dug the hole he was stuck in.

More than anything else was the personal nature of it. It was something he had to deal with almost entirely on his own, regardless of whether or not his bandmates had his back.

He'd been the one to dig the hole, and with no easy escape, he was the one who had to climb out.


	5. 3. I Can Hear The Sound of Your Voice Haunting Me Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the dredged-up feelings having a chance to rise all the way to the surface through the night to remind him of the past, Kip has a rough time waking up after Miami. It doesn't take long at all for Reb to figure out that something's not right, or for his bandmates to give him the short distraction he needs before it pulls him down too far.

"Kip? _...Kip?"_

Kip woke up to bright sunlight in his eyes and the sensation of fingertips softly probing his back.

"Kip, are you alright?"

"Shuddup, 'm sleepin'..." he murmured, stretching his arms forward, heaving a sigh, and face-planting back on his pillow.

"Alright, I guess you're alive then. That's good; you can stay a few extra minutes." Kip felt someone pull the side-slung blankets back over him.

Slowly, he opened his eyes again. Just as the light faded as his curtain pulled shut, he realized who had checked on him.

"Wait." Kip sat up. "Where are we? What time is it?"

"Well, we left Miami around 10:00 according to the driver, and we're in Tampa. Parked. We're just waiting for the equipment offload and the all clear to start heading inside." Reb looked troubled. "It's 3:30, Kip. How late were you up last night?"

Kip groaned, suddenly aware of a headache -the kind that came from stress rather than physical ailment. Not very painful, but annoying. It felt like wearing a headband that was too tight.

"Shit." That went for how he felt physically, disbelief of sleeping so late for himself -even for a longer night, and remembering what had happened behind the stage after the show.

It wasn't that he'd stayed up any later than usual on the road -he'd passed out asleep after the night wound down. He'd woken up just two hours later desperately thirsty again, as was usual following a performance in stifling heat and humidity. Having had enough time to recover from the heat exhaustion, getting up for a drink was enough to allow hazy thoughts to begin moving around in his mind about a certain night when he'd been on tour with Alice, and all the following uncertainty.

_Did that seriously happen, or was I imagining...?_

"Kip, do you not _feel_ well?" Reb's brow furrowed, but with his bangs covering his eyebrows, it just made his eyes look larger and fearful rather than suspicious.

_...yeah, it's all real. Damn it._

Kip shook his head and rubbed his eyes as he sat up. "Hold that thought, Reb. I'm not sick, but there's something I gotta talk about -might as well get it over with."

"You need a minute to wake up first? There's coffee left from when Rod made it if you need some of that too. If it's still good. I don't know -it's been sitting awhile."

"Remind me to thank him if I don't." Kip pulled his kit from his duffle bag and high-tailed it for the lavatory. Brushing the tangles out of his hair and splashing cold water on his face dulled his headache enough to make him feel human again, and after a few minutes to let the sunlight coming through the bus windows and to let the slightly stale coffee kick in, the haze lifted from his mind. Like after his shower; however, Kip still felt a sensation of something invisible, unclean, and heavy on him that he hadn't been able to shake off, wash off, brush off, or find any relief from since running into Jon backstage.

"I never realized until our first tour where we went somewhere hot that there's such a thing as a heat exhaustion hangover," said Reb, sitting beside Kip in quiet while waiting for him to wake up fully. "That was rough."

Kip tossed back the rest of his coffee before he could taste it. "Yeah, it was, but if I'm gonna be honest, there's more to it than that for me."

"What's bothering you so much?"

"Remember when I was with Alice, and how things fell through with Jon?"

"How could I forget? It shocked me," said Reb. "Jon's always come off as a good guy, but that sure put a dent in my respect for him with that low move."

"Yeah, well, if you wanna know why it took me so long to get back to our room last night, it was because someone was waiting in the tunnel last night, and was pretty eager to talk to me right there. Care to guess what about?"

"Wait a minute." Reb's tone went deathly serious, his eyebrows knitted together, and his hands rose up so that the index finger of one struck the extended fingers of his other forcefully as he listed. "He led you on, promised to commit, then tossed you to the side like one of his groupies, and now he has the nerve to just run straight up to you three years later and corner you backstage? He's joking, right? Is he really seeing this like it's all a joke?"

"Reb," warned Kip. He inhaled and exhaled noisily through his nose. "Leave it. Please."

It wasn't that it was untrue. He just didn't know how to feel toward Jon, and if he had to look back into a part of his past he'd done his best to pack away and leave behind, he wanted to pull out as few hard feelings as possible. If he was going to get worked up enough to rant, he wanted it to be with Jon so that he could deal with it one time only. And while Jon had broken a promise, Kip felt that he hadn't actively gone out of his way to hurt him, and it wasn't public, so the humiliation was personal.

Luckily, Reb seemed to catch on before he had to explain that much.

"Gee, Kip. I'm sorry. Really. I know you only told me the basics and I'm not the one who should be having a fit. That wasn't fair, but..." Reb shook his head, fast and flustered. "I still say it wasn't right of him, even if he didn't mean it that way, and I'm not just gonna forget it."

Kip's guard dropped back down. "No, there's nothing wrong with that -I agree. I just know that shoving the past in his face for revenge isn't gonna undo it or make me feel any better. If anything, it's just gonna make it worse for both of us, 'cause it's not like it was still bothering me before we ended up on the same schedule here."

"And I know it's not gonna make much difference in the long run with what he did last night if that's all; it just annoys me that he'd be that disrespectful."

"I'd probably be annoyed right now too if I let myself, and maybe I am and I'm trying to tell myself I'm not so I don't do something stupid on top of it," Kip admitted. "I don't know. I hardly knew him aside from that night. Expecting that to work out even if he had called probably wasn't my best call. We've mentioned talking in Orlando, so I'm at least going to try and keep an open mind and hear his side. I can't really tell where we stand until then."

Reb crossed his arms. "I dunno; even if he's got a damn good excuse, if that were me, it'd take a long time to get back on trusting terms."

"It will, if we can even get there, but it could happen." Kip rubbed his temples and forced himself to sit up straighter to look at Reb. "I mean, some of the people I'm closest to, I didn't exactly start off so great with. Didn't mean they weren't good people."

"I was being stupid then. You had a reason to call me out." Reb seemed to wilt beside Kip.

"No, both of us were being stupid to a point." Kip put his hand on his shoulder. "And really, we took some things too seriously."

"Well, I thought you weren't taking me seriously and that you were too full of yourself to take me seriously, and I know you were taking what you were trying to tell me seriously though-

"Maybe a little too much, even if it was true," added Kip.

"And I wasn't taking that all seriously at first because I was too hung up on taking everything you said to try and get me to lighten up too seriously -which if I hadn't been so strung up on it, I would have probably found it funny." Reb groaned. "I know my old man was right when he said I'm too sensitive-"

"But you were having a rough time then, and the way he said that only got you more wound up over it, and there's the cycle. Look, you're being overly-serious Reb Beach right now over this mess too. I wanna see funny Reb Beach," said Kip. "That's who'll make me feel better."

"Hmmm." Reb looked down to the ground, biting his lip, then looked up as something seemed to light in his eyes. "Do _you_ wanna throw a fit like I did in the studio then? Jon won't see any of it, and we're not gonna tell on you."

Kip sprung one of his evil grins he would use onstage with Alice, whirled around in his bunk, snatched his pillow, punched it three times, and then picked it up and proceeded to hit Reb with it.

"Hey!" Reb jumped up and grabbed his own pillow from the bunk above to block the attack, just before Kip threw the pillow on the aisle floor and gave it a swift kick, and decided then that he'd beaten it up enough.

"It took Paul a little while to warm up to me too. Not too long. Alice made that pretty easy, but it still took a bit. We weren't like I was with you though. I think Paul caught my serious side first and didn't think I was very social; he said he wasn't sure how to approach me at first!"

Reb grinned. "Paul intimidated by you? _Paul Taylor?_ I don't believe it. How did he end up figuring it out?"

"Knowing Paul, how do you think? He was just being himself. Playing around, and once I wasn't tied up with getting my session work done and helping with the composing adjustments, he figured out that I'm not so uptight and no fun." Kip smirked mischievously. "Which as you know was great, because then we got along and we were never bored anytime Alice didn't need us -running around the place and causing trouble. Probably wasn't so great for Alice though with having to put up with us. He was a saint for that."

Reb snickered. "And then on tour -nobody would know it when he turns into his kind of Mr. Hyde for the shows either."

"No, nobody can ever really know that unless they spend some time with Alice." Kip sighed. "And then on the road -between what we did get up to -Paul and I found out we did well writing together, you and I already knew that we did once we worked out all the grumpy stuff, and then you know how the rest of it happened. The only one of you guys I hit it off with right away was Rod when we found him. Not that that's hard to imagine with him."

"But Rod -the only thing in this world he doesn't go easy on is his drums." Reb shrugged. "Maybe he takes so much out hitting things that he doesn't have any frustration left to show people!"

Kip chuckled. "Maybe. Well, if I gotta sort this out with Jon, I guess we'd better tell Rod and Paul too. So if I'm not around or if I end up acting weird, you all know why."

Rod and Paul were sitting with the practice keyboard across their laps when Reb and Kip arrived in the back lounge, which on its own could have spelled trouble. However, that was the least of their concerns, for Paul was giggling and sporting a grin that was suspiciously _too_ innocent for Paul Taylor, and Rod was laughing so hard that he was sobbing.

_"Again?"_ Reb's voice pitched up an octave on the second syllable. That, and the face Kip made -bugged eyes with one eyebrow lowered and the other arched -only made it worse.

"D-don't ask," Rod cried a barely coherent response to Kip and Reb's incredulous looks, which succeeded in pushing Paul over the threshold from giggling to full fledged laughter. "We'll tell you later, but _please,_ d-don't ask!"

"Because you were misbehaving in here again, or you can't talk?" Kip's alternative question did no more favors for his hysterical state.

"Yeah, I think we'd better wait and let Rod catch his breath first so that he won't pass out." The extreme seriousness Reb spoke with only set them all off together. "He's crying too -maybe we'd better save him from drowning!"

"Correction, _I'll_ tell you guys, because I don't think he'll be ready even if we do give him a chance to pull it together," Paul choked, elbowing Rod playfully as Rod wiped his eyes and doubled over his lap, only further stricken by Reb's assessment.

Kip raised his eyebrows and took a step back. "I don't know Reb, if Paul started it, you're gonna be the one to do him in!"

_"Ow!"_ Rod looked up at Paul with more tears in his eyes, silently pleading for mercy.

"Or you will, Kip; and you can't pretend I don't know you will!" Paul pointed at Kip with one hand, and this time he hugged Rod with his other arm instead. "Aww. Don't mind Rod; he's having a moment. He was acting too serious, woke up not feeling too good, and I told him he needed some therapeutic laughter."

Rod pulled out from under Paul's arm, blew out a shaky exhale to distract himself, and groaned when he finally managed to get an uninterrupted breath. "Which is funny he's calling it that when I feel like I'm gonna break a rib!"

"Man, Paul, you're being mean," Kip scolded. "Beating up on Rod like that and making him cry!"

"I promise I wasn't trying to do that to him, even though you make it sound like it! Obviously, he needed it, since he kept going this far!" Paul winked at Rod. "I don't know, Kip; you seemed a little off last night, and you're making me nervous, being the last to get up. Maybe you could use some too."

"I probably could," Kip admitted mournfully. Reb's giggling ceased as soon as he said it, and if there was any reason why Kip would have changed his mind about spilling the beans now, he couldn't. Paul and Rod might as well have had a giant red flag in front of them. And it wasn't a secret anyway. Reb knew, because he'd ended up telling Reb the surface details, and Paul knew even more because he'd been with Kip in the aftermath. Only Rod hadn't been told anything about it, and Kip knew well enough that their last downtime in the lounge had given him hints that something wasn't right.

"What is it getting to you?"

"So, I got approached by Jon backstage last night," he started, looking and feeling more bashful than he was used to.

Mercifully, Paul dropped his play then.

"It wasn't anything bad, was it?"

"No, just very sudden and a little uncomfortable. Though I think even if we'd planned to meet, it still would have been a little iffy."

"Well, of course, all things considered.

"Alright, that does it." Rod cleared his throat and recovered with the distraction at hand. "What happened that you all haven't told me about?"

He paused and fixed Kip with a reassuring look. "If it involves anything greenhorn related and embarrassing, I was there not too long ago, and somedays, I question if I'm not still there, so this is a judgement-free zone."

"Yeah, we're in the back of the bus; Paul could tell you that what happens here stays here!"

Kip's guard seemed to relax, and he smirked at Reb's dig.

"Oh, look; he's already starting!" Paul's face lit up. "And you guys can't put the back of the bus on me this time -Reb, now you've done it! Don't laugh now, Kip -you still gotta tell Rod what happened before you can laugh it out."

"Well, Rod, you kinda called it the other day when we were misbehaving in here. The hot frontman thing really happened, only I had an experience with Jon back when I was with Alice Cooper."

With an assurance that he was okay with sharing despite his reaction to Rod's joke, and Paul and Reb's quick jump to shut it down, Kip proceeded to tell about meeting Jon backstage with Alice, and about the kind of conversation they had. He left out the majority of the details of his more intimate encounter with Jon, save for how they "slept together" and had been in a private place. He decided he wasn't willing to admit to it being on the back of a bus and fuel that joke further, before describing Jon's promises to call and how they had fallen through, with last night being his first time speaking to Jon since.

"So, we have been together, just before I was a frontman. And now we're back together right in the middle of a mess." Kip smirked. "But hey -I can at least say I did make out with Jon Bon Jovi, which most other guys can't."

Rod shook his head, not bothering to hide his blush. "You know I was just playing around then, but I'm sorry, Kip -I didn't know."

"We didn't tell you. It was wishful thinking on my part to want to get to the end of the month without it coming up."

"Are you alright with it?"

"With trying to deal with this? Good question." Kip shook his head wearily and found himself laughing weakly, more with nerves than humor. "You know, if working it out is possible, that'd be great, and I'm up for trying, even though I don't see it happening fast."

"We're traveling alongside each other for a few weeks," said Rod. "You've got some time to work it out if it is possible, and it's not super long if it's not. The best part of how we're set up on this tour -he's easy to find if things are going well, and if it doesn't go well, they still have all their stuff separate from us. It'll be easier than it could be either way."

"If nothing happens by the end of this month, you'll know," said Paul, right before his sincere tone turned playful as he went in for the kill. "Let's face it Kip; Rod wasn't wrong when we shut him up the other day. You still have the same looks and moves and attitude as then, but now you got the advantage of being the hot frontman too. It wouldn't have worked out back then if you guys try again and you get to the end of this tour without at least making out a little!"

Reb shot Paul a look that said _'really?'_ -right before he crashed his face into his hands and shook his head.

Despite it, Kip managed a real laugh this time -enough to release some of the tension inside himself alongside the minor embarrassment. He knew it was why Paul said it, even if it had been enough to bring a rare blush to his own cheeks.

Rod groaned. "Paul, you keep quiet. Don't listen to him, Kip; he's insane."

That was enough to break Reb, who had been holding it together out of respect for Kip. His much brighter blush accompanying his giggles told otherwise from the innocent reaction he'd first given Paul's remark.

"Besides, if he does something stupid and breaks your heart, he's gotta live on the road next to us for the rest of the month," Paul teased. His smile was getting bigger and bigger, like a kid at a play park. "And then when we see him again in Ohio."

"That could be a really, really long month and trip home for him if he screws up now." Reb looked right at Kip, and though his widened eyes said he was joking, his serious mouth and demeanor confirmed it wasn't entirely untrue.

"Oh, Reb, trust me," said Paul. "We know you'd make it longer for him on your own than any of the rest of us would put together!"

"And then he'll have to face us again in July," Rod added. "I dunno, one of us might just go after him harder than Paul went after his keyboard earlier."

"Does that have to do with why you were getting ready to die when we got here?" Reb looked at Rod suspiciously as he diverted his glance to Paul's keyboard, biting his upper lip to keep from laughing again. "Do I even want to know?"

"Okay, okay," Paul ceded, "I'll go through it again so that there's no confusion and everyone understands what happened in here."

"Oh no." Rod put a hand over his heart. "No!"

"Hey! Kip's going through a rough time right now. He needs to laugh it out too; this is for him." Paul playfully wagged his finger at Rod. "Let's get to it then. So, when it comes to how we all are with each other, let's be honest. Reb, you and Rod are probably the most serious ones of us here. Obviously, not entirely so -I think Rod proved that point when you two came in, we know what Reb's capable of, and Kip's not far removed aside from when we're all playing around."

"Oh _no,"_ Reb repeated. When he glanced over to Rod, Rod turned away from him, sucked his lip in tighter, and clinched his hands beside himself.

"Anyway," Paul continued, "Reb and Rod are the most likely of us to be serious about not pushing the limits and being careful about what might and might not be a good idea. Sometimes we have to push them to cut loose and have some fun. Now, Kip is somewhere in between me and them. He's serious and knows exactly what we're trying to do and how to make it happen, but we know better than that -we know he knows how to have fun, and you won't have to tell him to push the limits to have fun. Unless you dare him to, just to see if he'll do it."

"And I will," Kip added.

"And he will," Paul repeated in a way that was almost like saying 'amen.' "Alright, set that thought aside for a second, but keep it in mind when you consider _this._ We can't deny it. We've seen it -even our managers have said it -Reb and Rod make some of the craziest faces when they play; doesn't matter if they're even trying to or not or the most serious ones of us. Half the time they're not aware of looking like they're being electrocuted. They look completely insane -and there's nothing wrong with that; let me say that now before I keep going."

Kip smirked for real this time as he watched Reb grin bashfully and watched his cheeks stain pink. "Oh, I see where you're going now."

Paul grinned back at him. "So, Kip will make them too, like he just did a moment ago. Aside from when he's forcing the high notes, he's usually pretty aware of it. More often than not, it's intentional. Because I'm not the _only_ troublemaker in this band, say what you all will!"

Now Kip was visibly fighting the urge to laugh. "Aww, come on," he groaned as Paul reached over and mimed shoving him playfully.

"That's right, you all can call me the biggest troublemaker here if you want, but Kip's right behind me; don't deny it!"

Rod whimpered as Kip made a wild face and held up his hands like claws, reaching one in Paul's direction and the other at Reb.

"...So how is it that I -the one who you all say is the rowdiest of us; the one who can't be taken or left on his own anywhere without looking for trouble -is the only one who doesn't go after my guitars or my keyboard looking like I'm trying to kill it?!"

Paul mimed attacking the keyboard -first with rigid, claw-shaped hands. Then to Reb and Kip's great surprise he reached behind him to attack it with Rod's drumsticks and mimicked Rod's wild expressions with an open-jawed smile and bugged eyes. He kept going long enough to succeed in getting Reb to mime one of his own guitar solo faces, which didn't last long before Reb cracked up, taking Rod and Kip with him.

"I can't take this again!" Rod flopped back on the out-folded couch. "No!"

"Yeah -we were doing it together, before he went off his chain. So while Reb was trying to get you up, Kip; Rod and I were banging on a keyboard -literally!" 

"And that sounds _wrong!"_ Reb pointed to the ceiling forcefully to emphasize his dirty-minded implication.

"Yeah! I don't see Kip getting that far with Jon if all goes well, but as far as making out goes, I know there's gonna have to be some tongue involved somewhere -Kip does that with us just to joke around; that's another thing he does with his intentional funny faces!"

Kip sent an evil grin Paul's way. He mimed tonguing his index finger with less than an inch from contact before he went over and slid it down the keyboard so that a descending C major scale trilled out in the form of a glissando, and that was finally enough to make Paul crack and laugh hard. He turned to the side to cling to Reb, who was already near falling over with Rod.

Still hysterical from before and too weak to make much of a response, Rod slapped his palms down beside himself defeatedly before sitting up.

"There you have it," he choked out to Kip, who flopped down on the other couch and wheezed in hysterics of his own.

"Stop; my stomach!" pleaded Reb, feeling too much discomfort between the force of laughing and the pressure of Paul leaning against him.

"I was gonna say," Paul laughed as he surfaced from Reb's arms, now also teary-eyed, "well, you asked. Now you're gonna get it!"

"Yeah, Rod got my story and I got his."

"And yours isn't over, Kip," added Paul.

"Ready to go!" came a call from the front of the bus.

"And right on time too." Reb led the charge off the bus in a nervous habit to get to soundcheck and make sure everything was right -to have less reasons to be nervous getting on. 

But rather than following him as usual, Kip split off and went to find Jon, who was luckily in the hall, eliminating the indiscreet act of knocking on doors.

"Is tomorrow on?" asked Jon. "Or are we waiting?"

He was nervous, Kip noted. Kip was void of any emotion on the outside from the mix of what he'd sat up in the middle of the night to, and it was how he hoped to be until they were in private.

"We're going to the hotel tonight -if there's time and it's not close enough to time to leave that we'll be arriving for soundcheck wound up, I'm not objecting. But if it's going to be a problem, the day after."

"I'm not gonna argue with that." Coming out of a talk wound up was a point even Kip hadn't thought of last night.

He showed Jon the room number he would have left on the updated day sheet on the bus, and Jon provided his, before Kip returned to his bandmates to prepare.

Reb, Rod, and Paul couldn't help him with much -with as personal as his ordeal with Jon was -but if they could distract him when things didn't go so well, Kip figured that maybe opening up the past this once was something he could get through -as long as it was the last time, no matter the result.

The result would just have to start in Orlando.


	6. 4. Play Your Last Hand, Better Understand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon is left rattled by a nightmare before his talk in Orlando, and as the heat kicks up under the past, old feelings spring to the surface and boil over faster than he and Kip could have both imagined. They have an agreement, but it doesn't come painlessly.

Jon woke up at 10:00 in the morning after a night up well past 4:00 in the Orlando hotel, and he counted each and every minute leading up to 5:00 o'clock -even while going about writing and forcing himself outside for a walk in town to wake up and ground himself in reality -not giving himself the slightest chance to lose track of time.

Ordinarily, he would have preferred to sleep later if he could have on an off day, but Jon was a light sleeper to begin with, and the anticipation following the wild nightmare he'd woken up from told him not to bother with trying. It would have been a complete waste of his time.

Everything came back to him in the dream. _Everything._ It was vivid, and harder than most to break out of just because of how good it felt in the beginning. Jon could feel the pressure point on the bed where the couch on the bus folded down as a futon at a thick, hinged beam beneath the cushioned surface. He could feel Kip against his side where they'd curled around each other on that couch, and even with his training, _how the fuck could he manage to bend his limbs that way?_

There was the same passing of the slip of paper with the number, stained with the fake blood -the spread of it starting with Kip's fingertips teasing Jon by tapping and tonguing his lips before allowing Jon contact with them -and Jon folding it up, staining it further with his own fingers. He could feel the paper and its dampened spots in his fingers.

That was where it all diverted from reality, and Jon knew it had too. He had picked up the slip of paper, but his dream still wouldn't give him any hint as to where he'd lost it. 

_...It seemed to materialize in his hand -he hadn't produced it from a road case or overnight bag, pocket, or a cranny on the bus. Wherever he'd put it, he'd never know for sure._

_This time, in the alternate reality of his dream, he remembered. He had the phone in his hand in the hotel, and the bloody slip of paper in the other. He was going to dial out and make the call. Keep his promise, speak with Kip..._

_No dial tone._

_He held the phone up, placed it back on the hook and picked it up again, gave it a shake -nothing. Chilling silence._

_Then the tone was there, piercing the silence like the groan of a blown-out amplifier, blasting far louder than it should have, earning him murderous glares down the hallway of the hotel when he poked his head through the room door. He had to deadbolt it as the sound of running, pounding footsteps started down the hall; and hanging the phone up wouldn't silence the noise._

_He tried dialing the number almost obscured with the bloodstains that had seemed to have multiplied in size, only to get the long, steady, rhythmic beep of a busy signal that only grew louder with each and every beep, and it too would not stop, no matter how many times Jon slammed down and picked up the receiver. Higher-pitched, short beeps sounded over the lower, longer ones as Jon frantically tapped buttons -first the zero for an operator to start a new call, but eventually hitting anything in hopes it would break it out._

_He finally reached down and yanked the phone cord from the wall. Blue sparks flew like lightening and sent a sickening, electrical crack into the night, and all went still and black..._

_Suddenly, he was not in a hotel room in the dark of night, but in a backstage lounge, still holding the same phone. It seemed it was alive, even though its cords dangled loose and disconnected on the floor of the dressing room. The number pad was now stained with the fake blood; red obscured the numbers, but Jon knew where they should have been and kept pushing._

_However, Richard was there, snatching the phone from him, telling him that he had ten minutes until time to being onstage; thus, he had no time to make a call. As Jon clung to the phone, holding it with a death grip and pulling it back, the spiral stretching cord wound itself around his neck, and he felt the electrical prongs at the end of the straight power cord prodding him in the side of his neck between the coils formed by the other. He couldn't breathe now as Richard kept pulling and the coils multiplied. The doors busted open, and a flood of girls joined, pulling the two cords and the phone from all ends until he was gagging and couldn't feel his hands anymore to try and stop it._

_It was as hypoxia set in and the world turned hazy and grainy -smoothing out all the sharp edges and taking away the urge to fight it all -that the harsh, fluorescent lights dimmed down, the girls disappeared, and finally, Kip stood before him once again, still clad in all black, with his mouth outlined in fake blood. This time, smudgy black eyeshadow that seemed too unfamiliar cast an evil shadow over his glinting, blue eyes, and they were icy with revenge. He pulled the phone away this time, with one blood-covered hand on the phone, and one to Jon's neck with the wires. Jon wheezed for air, and suddenly the blood didn't look fake anymore as the tourniquet of cords loosened and the wound inflicted by the electrical prong spurted freely with bright red._

"Oh for fuck's sake," Jon groaned as he woke up, after another huge gasp, and a frantic flipping off his bedspread and fingering his neck to make sure there was no blood anywhere. There wasn't, and he saw that the phone was also resting silently on the bedside table where it belonged, with all of its cords properly plugged into the wall jack.

He had to lie there and laugh to himself once the adrenaline wore off, feeling grateful for being the odd one in a lone room this time. Kip looking as though he'd come from a murder scene -or outright possessed -seemed pretty unlike him to Jon's perceptions. Even as driven as he'd seemed that night, talking about what he hoped to do in the future, Jon could hardly imagine that. And he'd been pretty easy-going in Miami when it was expected that he'd be outright pissed, and Jon wouldn't have argued with him if he had been.

He did decide that death by phone cord strangulation might just be an idea to drop by Alice Cooper for future sets the next time he ran into him. If that hadn't happened in some horror film yet, Jon was sure it would someday, just from how something that looked otherwise harmless became so frightening.

However, Jon didn't write off what parts of it could have been real. He was aware enough that Kip could harbor some much darker feelings than he'd displayed in Miami pushed deep down inside himself. He wasn't doubting the images his subconscious cooked up as a warning that Kip might let it rise to the surface more readily in the privacy of a hotel room over a busy, backstage passageway. His initial confidence that it would just be a simple talk to explain what happened had indeed choked to death on the phone cord.

It was the second full day in Orlando, and their off-night. As he and Kip both anticipated, meeting between the soundcheck and the show the night before was not feasible. Kip ended up on a phone call with Atlantic, checking on details with the recording process and contract for Winger's next album, and Richard Bozzett was still in rare form with making sure Jon's whereabouts were known at all times, following his 'little hide and seek stunt' in Miami.

Jon felt it was more time become nervous for him, but at the same time couldn't see a point in complaining when Kip was tied up on a phone and couldn't have talked, regardless of his own being in the hot seat with Richard. And perhaps if Richard knew and hadn't let him talk before the show, he'd have had a fair point in it too.

Kip had a similar outlook. Dealing with confirming contract details -how many demo tracks had they already gotten done and sent back from the road, and how far along were they in filling minimum time limits for a record -right before a show was nasty, but he'd taken it as a sign that the call from management at the record company was saving him from something worse. He felt better after his talk on the bus, but he'd woken up singing a different tune in Orlando the morning after the Tampa show, and this time, he felt it was too personal to talk about without giving a second thought. Doing it and winding up Reb before a show when he was going to be nervous enough didn't feel worth it. Knocking Paul and Rod out of their contagiously playful moods that were keeping him grounded didn't feel worth it either, and winding himself up felt like asking for another rough night the linger he thought of it.

He'd purposefully chosen to room with Paul for their couple of nights in the Orlando hotel. Paul wouldn't be as easily riled up and had the best background knowledge of the past fiasco, in case things really didn't go over well again. It worked out all around for other reasons anyway. The occasional break from the regular rooming arrangement of Kip with Reb and Rod with Paul kept otherwise monotonous life on the road interesting, and sometimes got new ideas floating around. Kip had fun rooming with Paul like old times and checking in on their ideas they would write out separately, and Rod and Reb could enjoy each other's quieter humor -as well as extra sleep. Reb would do anything to get as much sleep as possible, and being separated from Paul's antics, Kip would easily make a bet that Rod was getting the best sleep he'd gotten in the past few weeks.

Having the time before the show on the first day to have the less common writing session and joking around with Paul was enough to get Kip in a minimally calm state of mind by the end of the night. As he waited to see if Jon was going to live up to his promise this time, or if he was going to have to go find him, he was grateful for his decision and certain he wouldn't be feeling as steady under the weight of his thoughts otherwise.

He stood up quickly to keep from flinching when Jon knocked on his door nearly ten minutes before the top of the hour.

_Well, I'll give it to him for being on time,_ he thought before opening the door.

"Kip," Jon greeted, with most of his confident charisma missing, not unlike he felt of his own.

"It's good to see you here," Kip answered flatly, the implication that it was more an issue of his showing up than being together.

Jon took a nervous glance over Kip's shoulder into the room, noting the two beds present. "Are you roomed with someone?"

"With Paul," said Kip. "He and Rod hooked up with Rick and Fred to run into town and are probably going to stay out awhile. But if you're asking if he might come back while we're here, it's possible."

"I'm roomed by myself." Jon took a step back. "If you want, we could go to my room and not have to worry about having to keep anyone out. That's probably better anyway. I just... wanted to be the one to show up here for you."

Kip cast a knowing side-eye toward Jon -one eyebrow raised and one lowered, with his chin tucked down -and something about it shot right through Jon. 

He watched as Kip slid off the end of his bed and picked up the room key from the bathroom sink on his way out, stopping to scribble a quick note to leave sticking out from under the door in case Paul arrived back early.

Jon followed Kip down to the front desk and waited without a word while Kip dropped off the room key to leave accessible for Paul. Then it was Kip's turn to follow, pacing Jon from a few strides behind as he led down the hallway and up steps to his room.

Not a word was spoken on that walk. It felt to Jon that they were both afraid that letting slip one word in the hall would unfold a thousand more before they were safely inside his room, and that the whole world was following them from the lobby, watching and listening in invisible states for one to say something out of line and mortify them both.

Once they finally were behind the safety of a closed and latched door, Jon sat on the edge of the bed, and motioned to the armchair beside it.

"You can sit down, Kip. With both of us, it's probably going to be long."

"Well, I'll see if everything I have to say will be something I'll _want_ to say for right now. I could be really long, or really quick," replied Kip flatly as he hesitantly lowered himself down to sit on the very edge, ignoring the sloping back of the chair designed for leaning back.

"You can say as much or as little as you want," Jon ceded. "I'll tell everything from my side -which isn't much -and swear that it's honest, and if you want to tell me what you think and light into me for it, then that's fair too. You probably have more to say anyway, so if you want to start..." He motioned to Kip to go ahead.

"I'd prefer if you tell me what you did first. Even if it's what I've guessed, maybe it'll help me decide on a few things I'm not sure _what_ to think about."

Taken aback by Kip's tone and how rigid and cold it had suddenly turned, Jon chose not to question or push any further, and got to it.

"Well, you know we had our night together -special enough that I can still remember the details now..."

He told about the things he remembered from the flashes of their time together, and the slip of paper Kip had passed over.

"I regret not giving you my own number -even with my reasons for guarding it; maybe it would have made all the difference now. Because I meant it when I said you were special, and that could have easily been part of showing that."

Kip cocked an eyebrow, but didn't say anything.

"There's no real excuse I have for the forgetting part. I can blame it on the girls there the next night, or that Richie was sick that week, but that's not fair." Jon sighed and gazed to the ceiling thoughtfully. "The one thing I can say is I never remember seeing that slip of paper with the number on it after that night. Maybe if I'd seen it, it would have reminded me -and I know it would have, saying that -but maybe if I hadn't forgotten to call already, I would have been looking for it. I can't tell you when or where I lost it, Kip; all I know is it's definitely gone now after all this time.

"And I kept rolling on with life, just like that. Who knows if I had remembered and lost the number from the start -then maybe I'd have dealt with some of the feelings you're probably going to say you had if you go there. I wish I could say that I did, if it made it easier and more fair, but I can't.

Jon lowered his gaze again, and found Kip looking downward in thought, watching as he rocked his foot on the floor from heel to toe, seeming to pay close attention to the motion of his knee as he went.

"Then this leg of the tour was coming up, and I was meeting with management -now you know about all the stuff with getting ready when you're in charge..."

Kip looked up, moving his eyes without lifting his head, and for that moment, he and Jon looked at each other out from under stray locks of hair shielding the discomfort in their eyes.

Jon gave a pained smile.

"I went through the I.D. photos on the information for the crew, and I couldn't quite place you because you looked different from then, and being out of that place. But I knew right away that I'd seen you before. I knew it wasn't just any old backstage meeting and that whatever we had done together was special.

"I like to think it was denial that it was really you right away. Because when it all came back to me from that night, and I realized it probably was you, Kip, I knew this was going to be difficult for both of us even if we tried to stay away and pretend if never happened." Jon winced. "And maybe that would have been easier, but we'd have still been thinking about it. I'd like to think that if this is it for us, at least we end knowing the truth."

_There it is,_ Jon noticed, _that quizzical look on Kip again._

"I denied it when I passed you backstage in Tallahassee. Just enough that I couldn't be sure when I saw. But I know I knew it was you. I just didn't want to think you were the one whose heart I broke, and that was another unfair move I made. Just like watching in Miami to see you in on to know for sure -and coming at you without warning because I was in a panic to do whatever to make it right was unfair.

"I don't really know what happened for you after that. Miami too, but mainly our first time -obviously, a lot did happen." Jon motioned to Kip, spreading his arms out to suggest his changed appearance, band, and status. "I don't know if you're planning to tell about that, or if you only want to _tell me what you think_ , but I've said my piece. It's your call now, Kip."

A moment of silence passed, just long enough to be uncomfortable, before Kip moved so much as to blink.

He gave a small, huffy exhale through his nose, like the hiss of a cat. "Where do I even start?"

Jon gulped slowly to keep it from showing. _Here goes..._

"I guess before I get into the hard stuff that regardless of what happens, I don't want this to hang over our heads. I don't want either of us to dread when we're gonna be back with each other again in Ohio, and I don't want everyone else to feel uncomfortable when we're in the same area together, knowing something happened. If being on friendly terms is the best we can do, then that's good enough, but even that is going to take a little time for me to get comfortable with."

"That's fine with me too. You don't owe me anything more than that." Jon bowed his head submissively. "Not even that."

Kip nodded his acceptance.

"Jon, I'm not gonna deny that there was the typical kind of debauchery when I was with Alice. And there is now. Not out of control with drugs and passing out all over the place like it can get in some places -but the backstage lifestyle is there for both of us. I don't expect perfection in that way. I didn't go with you that night expecting you to hide out after every show, because I haven't done that.

"But, with you being who you already were, and the risk I was taking on my name if word got out to critics -with where I already was and knowing where I planned to be -I went with you expecting that it wasn't going to be just another fling that happens overnight and it's as if it never happened the next day. I expected it was going to continue-"

"I know you did," Jon admitted. "I promised you it was gonna be different, and that was the only reason you went with me that night. And I fell back on it."

"I waited awhile -a good while, because I knew how you could have been sidetracked with this lifestyle like you apparently were. I didn't give up on getting a call soon after," said Kip. "But I stopped expecting it soon enough. Before it got to my head to hold me down from moving on."

His flat tone was hard enough for Jon to decipher in their other times together -all in less than ordinary times, but more so than now -but Jon found it completely void of any feeling as Kip spoke this time. However, the dark and stormy expression far back in his eyes told the opposite. There was a silent storm of hard feelings over it that Kip had closed away under the surface -somewhere so deep he might have never thought of them again on his own, and he was trying everything to keep them from breaking free and attacking him again years after he'd dealt with it. And Jon was seeing and feeling the rigid, icy barrier keeping it from tearing them both up.

"If you're wondering whether I'd have answered after that point -if you'd remembered and called me in maybe two months when I was basically past it -yeah, I would have picked up and probably still been happy to get the call. And if we could go back in time, _yes,_ I'd hope that you'd call me, and I'd have hoped that we could have gotten to know each other better -and that maybe we'd be having a good time with how this leg of the tour worked out instead of having this kind of talk now.

"But I'm not wasting my time on imagining what would have happened so long ago now, and while it wouldn't have been much different -you still would have forgotten me and what you said for that time being until I'd given up on it -I'd seriously hope I won't have to explain why it's harder now after years to just bounce back and continue the same way like it didn't happen."

"No." Jon shook his head without breaking his gaze from the ground. "You don't."

"The silver lining I had in it for myself..." Kip paused and his tone lightened a step at the positive turn, but he looked weary of what he was about to divulge, "I've been lucky in who I've worked with, between my managers, and my bandmates -they've all been true to what they've said and stood up for each other as well as what we're working together for -and life with the fan base has been good. But I've heard horror stories from managers about other bands going under -from each other and from bad management. I've met good guys in other bands that aren't together anymore because they couldn't stop fighting each other, and I didn't ignore Alice all the times he warned me that people in this industry can be just as cruel across bands as anyone in the world. And if my luck runs out and I get struck by someone out there, maybe I'll be able to move on sooner in my own way, because I'll already have the experience of dealing with the same kind of hard feelings."

He paused again, this time to look Jon straight in the eyes.

"What I hope is that getting through this now with you will help me deal with fully forgiving those kinds of big things and making it right when it is possible -just as much as I want to clear it for just us."

When Kip didn't say anything further but kept staring him down with his blank expression, Jon took it as his prompt to respond.

"That's only fair when I'm the first to do it to you like that. You already know I want to do whatever I can to make it right, because it's all on me. And I'll be here to work with you on it -like I should be and how I should have been from the start."

"That goes both ways," Kip added. "You hold your end and I hold mine, and we both have to be open about what we need and how it's gonna be."

"And I know I already did backstage, but you weren't ready to talk and I should do it over properly. So, even though I've said it, I am sorry for what I did -or didn't- do, and for what happened, Kip -and for that the other night too."

Kip nodded, but didn't say anything.

"I hope you can at least trust that I get what you went through. I know I probably left you feeling used..." 

Jon trailed off. The words that formed in his head were _'or feeling like I treated you like some backstage whore'_ , and it wasn't inaccurate, but the thought seemed so harsh to him that he couldn't bear to plant it in Kip's head if he had not thought it before. He feared that saying it now would overwhelm and inhibit Kip from telling anything further, and he hung on his next sentence, reaching for something less abrasive.

"...and maybe, I guess I probably made you feel like -I guess I should put it-"

"Dirty, maybe? A slut? Or like a naive rookie that didn't have enough sense to know better?" Kip pressed his lips into a thin line and cast a sidelong glance at Jon from under his hair as the slack he'd given tightened up again. "Like I got put in place by a superstar? Perhaps _those_ are the words you seem a bit hesitant to spit out?"

Jon gulped and shifted his position on the edge of the bed with discomfort. "Not exactly how I'd have worded it, but along those lines."

"Well, whether you meant it to be that way or not, you're right about that."

_This is what happens when you open a door that's been shut for years,_ Kip thought darkly, turning to look down at the carpet. _It just had to come open this time when it was fine staying shut with everything in the past, and now it's gotta be like it just happened all over again._

Kip could see Jon trying to dance around anything that would make him feel talked down on. He knew Jon was trying to be respectful -to show him the respect of having made it to his own place and show that he didn't see him any less before. But having to walk back into what he'd shut up behind him, he remembered feeling like a rookie getting thrown back on the ground like a fool and told to stay there by an industry veteran, and every effort Jon made to avoid it only made him feel like he was getting the same talking down all over again -this time, straight to his face.

Despite knowing well enough it wasn't meant that way, he'd be damned to let feeling it now get to him enough to show it and embarrass them both. He wasn't going to have an outburst and swear at Jon or strike at him, nor was he going to flinch back from him or sit helpless to know how to respond -even though he felt the faintest desire to do all those things at once.

_Don't think that way,_ he willed himself, trying to cool off so that he could look back up without glaring daggers, and to be able to soon enough to not look like he was curled up to sulk.

_Don't get angry now over what happened then; it's too late to leave it alone now... Don't back down, but don't snap at him either... Don't do something stupid and add to this..._

"And I'm sorry that this is difficult too-"

_"Wait."_ Kip held up his index finger, staying bent over, now with his eyes closed and speaking with an ice cold, low voice just above a whisper. "Just wait."

Honoring the simple request, Jon watched Kip silently instead. He watched Kip take a few slow, deep breaths, run his hands up into his hair and stop to rub at his temples, and swallow thickly. The stress and pain of the past was visible now, but Kip's rigidly calm exterior stayed frozen in place. 

Jon had prepared himself for yelling, cursing, and being called all the scornful titles he'd put on himself over the past couple of days. As much as he doubted it would happen with the way Kip carried himself and the time passed, he'd been aware of the possibility that their talk could become emotionally heavy and that he would have to jump to damage control right off the bat.

What he hadn't prepared for was this stoic Kip, and just how polite he was making an effort to be as he told his side. Even as he called him out on his faults directly, he was painfully polite. That, to Jon, was far more terrifying than if Kip had been yelling straight into his face while wielding a bloody phone cord, and it was striking him in the one place he hadn't guarded himself, taunting him as just one more way that Kip should have been different than the common, one-night stand.

He willed himself not to fold in on himself at the nauseous feeling twisting his stomach and spreading upward to shoot a sharp ache through his sides. He only got such pains when he'd done something he was overwhelmingly ashamed of, as he had. Guilt pain, he'd found, was a real thing that could strike over the smallest, most ridiculous things -sometimes things he couldn't control. This time, he deserved it, and he refused to seek comfort or stop Kip to dig for pain relievers he doubted would help him.

Kip finally looked up, and spoke with a curt laugh -sarcastic, and somehow making him seem even more rigid, cold, and dark.

"You know, I said the other night I was pretty sure I was over it, and I thought I was. Having to look back like this? Clearly, I'm not."

"Neither of us are," Jon agreed. "Not even close."

Silence fell for another moment just long enough to cross the threshold of discomfort.

"I'm not angry at you personally, Jon," insisted Kip. He sighed and ran his hands up into his hair again. "I get how it could happen that way, like I said. But I was angry -and yes, hurt -with the situation I lived through at that time, and having to suddenly deal with it again when I hadn't thought about it once for a long while is _really fucking hard,_ to be honest -so bear with _me_ while I bear with getting through this with _you."_

He stood up, heaved another sigh, and paced around his chair in thought twice, before finally beginning to take small steps toward the door.

"All I ask is for you to be honest if _you_ don't see it working out, if we end up trying to go further than getting back on comfortable terms. Live up to being open with me like you said you would while we try to start over, Jon, please. And if we can and we do make it back to where we were, keep your word this time. Because if this is some sort of game you do with groupies and backstage visitors, I'm not playing it, and this _will_ be the last time you lead me on."

"I understand, and I promise it's not like that, Kip."

"Then don't let it turn into that. Remember, just because I'm willing to try it doesn't mean I'm ready to trust you again."

In the back of his head, Jon could hear the lyrics Kip had forcefully shouted out last night -more so than in Miami -over the instruments clambering about the chords that hung between the dark, evil tone of G minor, and the tension and anxiety of A minor, settling for a conflicted power struggle of emotions, as much a struggle as the positions of the chord progression had to have been to physically hit. A quick thought as to where between the frets the rhythm chords might have rested on the guitar merged with the horrors of his nightmare, so that he saw the guitar strings breaking and tying his bloody fingers down before he could move to identify the position of the next chord, leaving him no choice but to surrender his attempt.

Kip now had the door to the room open, and he was standing on the threshold, holding onto the door frame with one hand and the doorknob with his other like they were the only things keeping him in place rather than bolting.

"We're not done talking. The door's already open, so we're going through with clearing this. But I think we'd better save the rest for another day. Before you end up in over your head, and before I say something I'm gonna regret and have to carry on mine."

Jon watched as Kip deliberately pulled the door closed slowly, and very gently. It even rested on the frame ajar, without enough pressure to make the latch give way and click shut.

When he looked away from the door, the first thing in the room Jon's eyes landed on was the phone, and he saw red that wasn't there as his stomach twisted again and sent another shooting pain through his sides -this time, so intense that he wanted to lie over, curl up, and not move at all.

Instead, he sprang up from the end of the bed into a hunched sprint, but only dry-heaved in the safety of the bathroom with the feeling of dirtiness he couldn't expel -the same one he knew he'd left on Kip.

Kip doubted Paul would be back already, but he walked down the hall to his room first to try it anyway. He needed to clear his head before going down to the front desk where he was on display to anyone in the world. The halls were empty, but he had the same feeling he had making his way through the lobby on his way to Jon's room -everyone was watching and he had 'dirty' written all over himself after spilling all the dark, dirty feelings he hadn't planned to tell. He shuddered at the thought, feeling the same convulsion to his body he felt after being sick to his stomach, but with the lack of nausea. Once he'd said one thing he felt that was already private enough to question admitting right away, everything else came with it, and he was just as shocked as he suspected Jon was. Enough to want to have just a few minutes out of sight until the eyes his subconscious imagined being there turned away from him.

So he was somewhat thrown when he looked down and found his note missing from under the door, and when it swung open to leave him facing Paul while the last of the storm was still swirling through him.

"Kip, are you okay?"

Kip chose not to try answering that question, and instead tried to respond casually, and as if he were not in shock. "When did you get back?"

"Well, Fred decided to go back and catch Eric and Lemma to see if they could get some of the guys to go to dinner together, so I walked back with him. We were all having fun with a joke anyway, and you know how tour managers are if we go anywhere alone." Kip expected Paul to crack a smile and a different joke about managers and their fits, but he stayed serious instead.

"When we got back, with the time it was and being pretty well past when you planned to meet with Jon, I figured I'd stay. In case you needed someone to be here with you afterward."

Kip inhaled deeply and swallowed hard, letting his discomfort show with the room door safely closed for him to lean back on, knowing that Paul's eyes weren't looking him over for anything dirty.

"I've had enough of it today, Paul," he warned, sounding defeated. "If I need anything from you all, I'll say something, but I'm just gonna leave it alone and worry about other things. Before it turns into something bigger than it is."

"Alright, you just tell me whatever." Paul perked up, intent on moving to a more pleasant topic before any truly bad feelings could spread. "Hey, wanna take a look at some of those songs we've been working on for a little bit before we think about getting something to eat? That way we have a little while to hang out and relax here?"

"That... sounds like a good plan for now." Paul watched as some of the tension seemed to release Kip's shoulders, and quietly sighed with relief.

He went to get his notepad.

"Once we get going, if you feel like you'd rather just order something and stay in and get this written, that's good too."

"Oh, no." Kip shook his head and managed a snide smirk. "A few minutes to wind down is one thing, but I'm not spending the night sulking in a hotel room over it and hiding from anything fun."

"Well, good," Paul declared, unfolding his notebook, "because I was hoping we'd grab Reb and Rod and show them the one we finished writing up yesterday that we only started seven months ago!"

"It only took that long -we didn't manage to get it done in the first five minutes we had it; we know how that works for us."

"Yeah, from that moment, we knew what we were getting into!" An idea struck Paul for an even better, much-needed distraction, and his eyes lit up. "By the way, if you're feeling good with it, with who Fred was talking about getting when we arrived, I think Rick Criniti might not be going with them. He kind of had that look of being left out, but you know he's got that real good, screwed-up sense of humor-"

Kip smirked for real this time; already, he was feeling better with something else to turn to for the moment being. "Yeah, he could have walked backstage at an Alice gig with us and nobody would guess he didn't belong there."

"Wanna invite him with us when we head out?" 

It wouldn't have been the first time Paul had invited any of them along; so far, touring along Cinderella had been fun, and throwing Bon Jovi into the equation couldn't have changed that much, aside that they'd spend more time together instead.

"Sure; if he's the only one being left alone tonight and he doesn't want to stay in, we'll take him along." Kip struck Paul in the arm. "Two hyper keyboardists at one dinner table -that's gonna make for an interesting night. We might just be in trouble."

"Aw man, that hurt!" Paul made his best mimic of Alice's evil laugh impression. "We're in trouble and it will be great! That does it." He sat down on the bed with his notes of chords and annotations. "I know where we left off yesterday, but I think we'll keep "Miles Away" put aside for tonight and focus on something else we haven't named yet instead. Take a look at this one, and _tell me what you think..."_

Kip found himself silently thanking Paul -all teasing for the troublemaker keyboardist he was aside -for being the first one to make that question easy for him that day.


	7. 5. It'll Take More Than a Doctor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning arrives, and Orlando is soon to be in the distance with the outed hard feelings left behind, but Jon isn't feeling any better. His symptoms manifest physically, even if all are rooted in his mind, and a few of his road guests are tuned into it too. Meanwhile, everyone else spends the time before departure together, and Kip gets a story about Jon to consider from an unexpected source.

The last performance in Florida was winding up to be far more difficult for Jon than the one in Miami, even being in heat and humidity that wasn't entirely smothering.

Going out to dinner following his talk with Kip had been a less-than-enjoyable experience with a complete lacking of appetite. Still in the throes of his shame-induced stomach pains, he went to his room for the night immediately upon getting back, not wanting anything to do with leaving it. Not even joining Richie and Lemma to jam and watch TV in their room on their invitation.

By the time he woke up in the morning, Jon was undeniably sick.

He was grateful that they'd had one night off, that the distance was short, and that they weren't on the road driving overnight into the Daytona Beach show Doc had managed to score them just one day before starting in Tallahassee. He was sure a late night and light sleep on the bus would have been the tipping point for him -possibly for Kip too.

Unfortunately, since it had been their last night in the respite of the hotel, and checkout time was mid-morning, he still had to wake up early to pack his bag and make sure he had everything out and back on the bus for their long, overnight ride to Greenville, South Carolina, and it added enough to his agony. He was now cursing himself for approving Doc's decision to slide another show in when they could have had two nights off before their long, Northbound ride.

_That was really bright on management's part this time too,_ he sulked, taking some time to flip through his copy of the tour schedule as a distraction once he'd settled into his bunk on the bus after checking out.

_One of the venue promoters just HAD to have us all come tomorrow night. They couldn't wait until after our Georgia shows and have it be around when we play Columbia. No, we have to ride all the way up to South Carolina so that we can ride back down into Georgia afterward. We could have had a short ride in comparison, but no..._

Jon could pretend he was upset with the arrangements the promotors and managers set up, but despite his internal monologue, he knew he wasn't. There was likely some reason why in the dealings of it all that made it make sense -something he wouldn't know until he made the choice to take on the responsibility of managing it himself, which he'd considered doing, but knew he wasn't quite ready for it yet.

_And I won't figure out how to make this right for Kip in one way or another until I quit sulking here over what I did and get on whatever work I have to do..._

But, he didn't feel quite ready for that yet either. Not with the nausea twisting his stomach, the chills weakening his body, and the headache clouding his thoughts. He was running a fever, feeling run down, and while he had a feeling it wasn't contagious, running away from his problems for just a little while in case it was felt pretty good to Jon.

_As long as I don't get too far and forget about them,_ he added to his conclusion.

"Hey!" A knocking came on his bunk post. "Jon, hey! You in there?"

He whimpered softly, feeling his head throb at the sudden sound.

"Yeah, Richie?"

His curtain pulled back to reveal a puzzled Richie kneeling beside his bunk.

"Jon?" Richie reached in with his free hand that wasn't holding the curtain to palm at his forehead, and did a double-take. 

"Man, when you were the last out and didn't come off the bus after stashing your stuff, I was getting ready to ask what kind of party you went to without us to get so hungover, since it must have been a hell of a good time to have you down like this," he quipped. "But I guess you're just sick."

"Mmmm..." Jon squeezed his eyes shut and pulled his knees in against his chest as the sharp pain though his middle tightened at the mention.

"The guys are all going out together to get some breakfast. Think it'd help to get something in you?"

Jon winced. He'd barely been able to stomach swallowing down the can of ginger ale he got from the hotel vending machine, though it had helped the nausea some after time passed for it to settle...

Richie bugged his eyes, hunched over, and grinned maniacally. Jon knew that the charade they'd somehow started in Japan was about to make its appearance again. He'd already accepted it might not ever go away.

"Come on, Jonny! Uncle Richie's gotta take his medicine now! Come with me -you need some medicine today too!"

"Nnnnh... Don't wanna."

Richie turned serious again. "You probably need to eat something before you can take anything to help with it. Even if it's just some toast."

"I think I'll go somewhere on my own if I want anything," Jon murmured. "I don't want anyone to catch it if it can spread."

"If it _can_ spread? What? Is it really that you're _sick_ sick and contagious, or are you just afraid that being around _somebody_ will make it harder for you to deal with what you're feeling?"

As if on cue, the radio playing at the front of the bus just past the bunks swelled into a chorus of sappy vocal harmonies over a flourish of synthesizer that echoed every chord the piano struck on a floaty, A Major lift that should have only belonged in fairy tale movies. Technically, it was the same sound Cinderella had taken with their most successful power ballad, but Jon could give them a pass between Tom's raspy voice holding it from straying too far over the line, and the name of the band alone was enough excuse for the sake of good humor. However, the same could not be said for Kevin Cronin's smooth, wailing take on it, and today was the last kind of day Jon would want to hear it.

"Hey, there's a romantic that makes our ballads look tame," noted Richie with a smirk. "Tell that to any critics, though I'm not sure if you're far from crawling on the floor with the way you're looking right now."

Jon did his best attempt of a naughty grin, which was halfway over the line with a grimace, because crawling was indeed beginning to feel like a possibility if he got to feeling any worse, all in his head or not. 

"Richie," he spoke, voice wavering as he forced it to go loud despite his discomfort, "if you keep standing here and joking about it, and you don't go turn that thing off, I _won't_ fight this feeling I have right now to puke all over you."

Playing along with the act, though also truly concerned, Richie flinched, bugged his eyes out in horror, and sprinted away from the bunk. Two seconds later, the tune of 'Can't Fight This Feeling' silenced.

"Alright, I get it. I'm hungry, so I'm gonna go eat whether you're coming or not. If you want to stay, stay. Nothing nose or throat, right?"

"Nuh-uh." Jon gave a thumbs up. "I'll be good to go tonight."

"At least we're not playing Augusta. It's just tonight and tomorrow night."

Even though that was more a matter of Winger and Cinderella playing at a smaller venue there, Jon silently _did_ thank Doc and Rich for that as Richie left him to himself to curl up and go back to sleep.

Once Richie rejoined everyone else and they set off on the walk to the restaurant a few blocks down, they worked out putting Tom, Eric, Tico, and Rod in charge of overseeing the group and reining them in if anyone started to get out of control. They'd all been touring long enough to figure out that it was rather easy to get rowdy around a table in a group of four, let alone thirteen. Fourteen if Jon came along. At the very least, the trouble included getting excited in the conversation of the moment and becoming far too loud without knowing it. But sometimes, they could outright turn into a group of overgrown children. 

They'd also found on many a tour that different bands had different thresholds of what to see as going too far. But since the night a few weeks ago when Fred Coury got splashed in the face with everything in Jeff LaBar's drink glass after he cracked one joke too many and Jeff chucked it across the table at him, they'd all been taking measures together to keep the line between public-appropriate antics and backstage party antics drawn clearly.

"We do that kind of stuff backstage -not where we could get kicked out for it," Eric reminded, pointing to Fred and Jeff once they were all seated with a few tables pushed together to accommodate the large group. "And that's not nice to the staff either, so we're not letting that die."

"And I can tell you they appreciate that thought," said Kip, matter-of-factly. Even no longer being in a position to have to put up with the mess, he could empathize, and wasn't quite ready for anything too wild himself after the previous day. 

"I don't know, they might not appreciate _you_ if you don't figure out what you want first." Reb tapped his finger on the menu in front of Kip. "Seriously!"

"You're not ever gonna let that one die either, are you, Reb?" Jeff was having one of his random giggle-fits in which everything became funny, and currently, Kip's challenged ability to make choices was his source of amusement. "You've told Kip that every time we've been somewhere together."

"Well, we do have a bus to be on in just a little over an hour, and the drivers might want to take off earlier if we can, since 4 East gets pretty stacked." Rod gave Kip the weary look. "I'm with Reb on watching the clock today. Better hop to it."

Kip gave a half-bashful, half-scheming grin, shook his head, and looked back to the options. 

"We can all yell while he's trying to order and make sure he's good and distracted," joked David. "Jeff, you and I, Richie, and then Paul, maybe, and-"

Paul began laughing, "and Tom can _really_ go shrill on us -it'd have to be him, since Jon's not here and Kip'll distract himself enough on his own without singing it!"

_"Shhhhh,"_ warned Tom. Placing his palms on the table and keeping his head bent low, he mouthed silently to Paul, David, and Richie. _'No.'_

"Aw, Tom, you're no fun when you're in charge," moaned Richie.

_'No.'_

But feeling a little too distracted with other things, Kip didn't have much energy to put toward indecision on what to get, and didn't pick up the play once Tom put it down, so everyone ended up staying relatively quiet until the waiter arrived. And with twelve other people present and strategically putting Kip last, he miraculously only took a couple of minutes on his turn rather than the usual five or more.

"Be still my beating heart." Paul placed his hand on his chest and pretended to slip down in his seat to pass out, and despite holding a responsible position at the table, even Rod humored him by miming along until Kip diverted his eyes bashfully and laughed.

"Aw, come on; you guys are gonna embarrass him," Tom chuckled, coming to the rescue. "Anyone got anything interesting to talk about _aside_ from Kip's difficulties with making choices?"

"Just life on the road," said Alec, looking up from where he was looking over the tour schedule with Tico, seeming to have been in an intense conversation off to the side with him over it.

"Why didn't Jon come along?" asked Jeff, looking up and down the table. "A phone call on business or something?"

"Sick," said Richie, opting to stick to his word to Jon and keep quiet on what he really suspected. "Staying on the bus. I don't think it's contagious, but he doesn't want to give you what he's got. Just in case."

"He's sick?" Jeff wilted a little. "Aw man, that's no fun."

"If he's getting rest, that's the best thing he can do." Alec shrugged. "Can't worry about it past that."

"What's he sick with?" Kip leaned forward and zoned in on Richie with his inquisitive expression that just screamed that he knew there was something suspicious.

"Beats me." On the other side of the table, Richie leaned back with upturned palms. "Doesn't sound like it's gonna cause problems with his singing, but he says he's not feeling right, and he wasn't looking right either. It felt like he was running a fever too. Felt the heat right on my hand."

Something about the look Richie sent read a silent message toward Kip's own:

_Look, I don't know what's going on with you guys, 'cause I can only get him to tell me so much at once. If you feel led to check on him, knock yourself out, but I know something's up._

"He was kind of quiet when we went out to dinner last night, and he didn't eat much," Tom noted, "so he was probably already coming down with it."

"Probably something stomach-related then," suggested Paul. "I mean, just about anything on the road will do it. Sucks, but it happens."

"He's not actually getting sick, is he?" asked Fred. "It might help him to eat if he's not actually puking."

"Fred!" Eric buried his face in his hands. "Not right before we eat, damn it! Hey, Kip, if you want to smack him, you've got the green light from me."

"No." Kip smirked and raised and lowered an eyebrow. "I only do that to my guys." He then slung his arm sideways right into Rod's arm playfully.

"Ooh!" Rod sighed with a tired grin. "As you can see, Eric..."

"Anyway, I tried to argue with Jonny," continued Richie. "I tried to give his arm a good twist to get him to at least come along -no, Freddo, he wasn't that sick -but he had some threats for me if I didn't let him alone, so there he stays on the bus."

"Ah, forget about him." Rick waved it off. "If he needs anything, he'll get it himself or ask us soon enough. Besides, you can't argue with him when he's sick."

"Why not?" Paul turned to Rick, and even Kip perked up, intrigued by what kind of naughty humor the unsung keyboardist might produce for them.

"I was gonna say, we give each other a helluva hard time when we're sick," said Tico. "You bet, Richie tried to twist his arm. I'm amazed Jon didn't end up coming anyway -he might have gotten less grief."

"I've always said it. You _can't argue_ with a sick _mind_." Rick spoke with a hint of laughter in his voice, perfectly blending it so that it was hard to tell if he was doing it deliberately to sound crazy, if he knew something that not everyone else did, or if he truly was laughing like only the evil and the insane could. "He didn't want to come, and he damn well wasn't gonna let you argue any different -not when he can't think it though. Doesn't matter if you're drugged, delirious, too distracted -I got another kind of sick mind myself, so you can't argue that with me! And I know Fred won't argue with it when I say that nobody can argue with Andy Johns and _his_ sick mind."

"Oh, fuckin' don't remind me." Fred moaned and shook his head. "The psycho killer acts like it's _my fault_ that he had to get two major session drummers when he's the one who ran me out with the yelling -'do that take again and do it fucking right this time' -and bragging about being a slave master, and-"

Jeff reached over and patted Fred's shoulder. "He's a jerk, but it's over, and he's not here. He doesn't deserve to make you feel like shit now."

"We keep saying that's gonna be part of our next photo shoot if Andy and the rest of management allow us to include Rick," said Eric casually. "We're gonna write 'sick mind' or 'psycho' across his forehead or something like that with as crazy as he acts when he's not in hiding."

"Oh, do it," exclaimed Richie. "I approve! If they say no, I'll go to bat for you, Rick. Whether Jon does or not -if he doesn't get on it soon enough, you just ask me, and I'll-"

"Richie, keep it down." Tom began to scold him playfully. "You know, what would Jon say about that if he was here? If he weren't tied up with something else while being here, that is -lord knows..."

Kip raised his eyebrows, questioning what Richie meant by that, and where Tom was going. He and Paul had kept quiet the previous night, but he wasn't putting it past anyone other than Richie to have put some subtle signs together too.

"Oh, I'm sure he would be tied up with something else," said Rick, and when he did, Reb set his drink down and sat up jet straight. Kip was just about to give Reb the 'leave it alone until later' look, when Rick continued in a way which thankfully deflected their concern.

"You know he'd have to have the sunglasses and the hat on, and he'd still have to be watching his back in here -he'd better not talk to Richie out here. Dead giveaway if anything else, and maybe he'd decide to go off with them anyway. And if that didn't happen, if you guys keep giving him a hard time when he's sick, he's just gonna want to stay on the bus without you!"

"Yeah, true." Fred sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. "Just like I gave up on trying to fight it in the studio once Andy turned me into a nervous wreck, and Rick resorted to staying off the stage."

At that, Kip's curiosity became too strong to ignore. Seeing Paul winding up with it too and knowing somebody was going to ask whether he did or not, he chose not to sit on it any longer.

"I've heard Fred talk about Andy and the session drummers and get what happened there, but what did Andy do to Rick? If he's okay telling..."

Tom sighed, gazing up to the ceiling under his bangs ruefully.

"As much as we like to joke between us that Rick is our sideman and how we like to deny having a keyboard player because of what some people out there will say, it wasn't our initial intention for it to be that way. It ended up like that over the time leading up to our first release."

"How?" Now Paul was curious too.

"Because it was stupid," said Eric tiredly. "You know how opinions go in and out every other month on what's considered cool around here, and especially with the sound we want to push-"

"Which is lot more blues-driven than one would think by the way you guys look, since everyone wants to judge a book by its cover-" cut in Alec.

"-yeah, and a lot of our managers were insistent that we'd be a lot more successful for our style -that people would have better respect -if they made it look like we don't have a keyboardist on _Night Songs._ "

"Oh, now that's stupid," groaned Reb, unable to hold back even while in his morning quiet. "Nobody ever said that to Paul, and if they did, we'd have had more than a few things to say they'd rather not know."

"It was fucking stupid alright. Of course, it did the opposite -when some fans figured it out, we caught some flak for hiding it, which is why he's listed on _Long Cold Winter_ as he should be, and as he should have been from the start if certain people hadn't made a problem of it," added Jeff.

Tom held up his hands. "Jeff... Settle down."

"Funny they kind of relaxed on that the same year you guys got started." Jeff motioned to Paul and Kip, then obliged having finished his point.

"Keyboard got cool again." Rick motioned for a second like he was getting ready to put his feet up on the table to make his point, but stopped just as Tico shot him the terrifying glare some drummers seemed to naturally possess and stiffly shook his head once to a rhythm that said _'uh-uh.'_

"So, I guess Andy was one of the ones who pushed that, but what about Jon?" asked Paul.

Kip sat back and listened, torn between caution at Paul's digging, and being thankful for not having to look suspicious by asking too much. The calm attitude Rick took toward it was reassuring, but Kip knew as well as anyone with the turn of the last week how deceptive it could have been.

"Well, we tried calling him up on it. He helped get us the record deal -said if we needed anything to just let him know, and that worked great for the four of us getting in to actually record," said Eric. "Rick joined us right before we started recording, so Jon didn't know him as well-"

"I'll give it to him that they were on tour too," Rick cut in.

"I think we were overseas -not that it fixes it," added David.

"Thing is, we did get ahold of him, and he seemed inclined to get hooked up with our managers again and make a case for getting me on officially."

"Or at least openly credited as a contributor and included in the cover notes and stage setup if that had to be a compromise," said Tom.

"With the idea we'd get it right by _Winter_ -and hey, I can't complain or argue there either 'cause it happened in a way. Even if the same fans who probably freaked out over me not being listed before looked at my name and went 'who the hell's this weirdo?'" Rick picked up a napkin and held it out from himself like a record sleeve, squinting one eye, bugging the other out, and poking his tongue through his teeth with a snarled mouth that exposed it.

Kip and Paul simultaneously slapped the table and snickered.

"All jokes aside," Kip said, running his fingers over his face and into his hair, "what happened from there with _Night Songs?"_

"Well, Jon said he'd get on it with the managers and say I was going to be in the dealings -obviously, he doesn't have a problem with keyboards-"

"Hey," Richie hissed, "he'd better not; Lemma could pound him with his fingertips alone!" 

David grinned and motioned to strike at Richie with his hand extended like a claw, fingers extended around a tonic triad chord.

"Guys..." Tico sighed and shook his head. "Let Rick finish his story; he's never gonna get through it if you keep on-"

"Oh, forget about it -I love it! Give me hell, Lemma!" Rick snarled his words as he shot a truly demented-looking grin at David with a low cackle. "Gotta be able to laugh at yourself. Something came up along the line -probably had to do with touring -and Jon stopped responding to the letters and phone calls entirely -so whatever he would have done, eh... It just didn't happen."

"We could not reach him -we even tried to hunt down Doc McGhee to try and get to him," said Tom. "By the time he got back to us, we'd already passed the album deadline, so it got released without him listed; the stage plans were set because we were ready to take off on tour -all that was left was a few leftover video shoots. Jon seemed to feel pretty badly about that -he did manage to dupe Andy into letting Rick into "Somebody Save Me" by having Andy in it with us too like we were recording -Rick could have been any session player just hanging out in the video-"

"Hey, I was there -beggars can't be choosers." Rick crossed his arms again. "Videos can become pretty ridiculous anyway; maybe it was just as well I was only there for a few seconds. And the 'Save Me' one was reasonable -some music videos out there put my mind to shame!"

"Poor Jeff Pilson," Paul giggled ruefully, "though I think he did pretty well pulling off his parts in those Dokken videos. Why the side of the stage now, Rick?"

"We never got around to changing the stage plans by the time the tour started, so I went with it."

"We gave him the choice to change it later," added Eric.

"They did," agreed Rick. "I just got used to it. It's not like my parts in the music are that significant anyway."

"Well, you're not pounding out rhythm and shouting to the world that you're there like Paul and Lemma do -doesn't mean you're not important," Jeff insisted, "despite what our joking might make you think."

"Oh, Rick does half the joking right on himself," Richie scolded in a low, husky tone. "Yes he does -he just did!"

"I do." Rick beamed, closed his eyes, and turned his nose up in the air as he sat back casually. "Like I said, how are you gonna deal with pleasing a sick minded producer if you can't laugh at yourself? Not worth the trouble to fight instead. Jon promised me that he'd make sure it was right with _Long Cold Winter_ , and he stuck to every word he said. They also made sure with Jon in the end that I wasn't going to be screwed over in the dealings with being listed as a hired gun and I'm still touring and enjoying myself -that's all that matters."

"He says he was fine with it, but..." Jeff suddenly went serious and cast a dark, sidelong glance to Rick. "I never thought it was right, and I'll just say I've already offered him to give Jon -and especially Andy -a good, fucking piece of my mind for him for that-"

Eric slapped his hand down on an open space beside his plate. "Ah-ah! We are _not_ gonna talk trash at the table!"

Rick shook his head, snickering to himself and waving Eric and Jeff off. "Don't worry about it -Jon's cool, and so's everyone else. I already said I'm fine with it; we're all cool, but if you want to think otherwise, Jeff, I'm not gonna tell you off either. If anyone else is still concerned, I can tell you the perks. I get to enjoy the touring life, and I don't have to deal with out of control people jumping on the stage or throwing things either. It's _especially_ nice being off the side when it's raining -getting that extra shelter - _aaaand_ , you don't get the hot stage lights on these hot nights we've been having-"

"See, there's one I could get behind," Rod admitted. "That last point is true."

"Jealous yet? Nah." Rick continued to grin evilly. "The stage is great; I've just decided it's not for me here -if I were playing my guitar, I'd think different. Besides... When you're the one hidden away and if you don't have a part on a certain song, nobody knows if you step off during a song. Or, if you leave during the goodbyes. And since I'm the first one off, I'll be the first one back to the bus or the dressing room for any early arrivals waiting for us -I'm the first one they'll see, but what happens in the dressing room and the back of the bus stays there, so I'm not telling how often that is or how well it goes."

"Man, Rick," laughed Fred, "how do you know about how many girls are waiting for us when you can't see them from the side and they don't know you're there?"

"Hey, you guys can rag on this guy all you want," said Paul, pointing and passing his finger across Tom, Jeff, Eric, Fred to land on Rick, lifting his arm up high enough for the sweep that he might as well have been pointing across the entire dining room. "All of you. And people out there can say what they will too. But between me and David, you'd be the odd ones out without a keyboardist if he weren't here-"

"And we're all the troublemakers too," David cut in.

"-which means we have strength in numbers _for rock and roll_!" Paul pointed across the table again, and Rick and David joined in with him at the end, pointing back.

"Paul, watch your volume," warned Rod, saving his mug from getting knocked over by Paul's enthusiastic arm motion at the last second. "And don't point that high up!"

"Oh, you think that's up high?" asked David. He tapped on Richie's shoulder and stood up with his arm extended over his head to point down over the table. "Richie and I can show you pointing up high!" 

"Lemma!" Tico pulled David by the shirt to fall hard back into his seat. "Sit _down!"_

"Alright, kids, that's enough!" Eric clapped his hands together as he cracked himself up. "It is _too early_ in the day for all this. Save it for tonight!"

"Damn right, it's too early," Reb groaned from where he'd quietly been sitting beside Kip and watching and listening to the craziness unfold.

"Yeah, and let's give Rick a minute in peace so that he can actually eat his food while we're at it," Alec snorted, motioning to the waiter coming over with food trays. "He's not used to getting so much attention to eat and talk at the same time!"

"See, Kip's your guy here who's slow to choose his food, and Rick is our guy who's slow to _eat_ his food." Jeff began giggling in his nervous manner again, but Reb cracked up too, unable to disagree and for once not being the one to start it.

Rick tossed his hands up and snorted. "Hey, I'm not gonna deny that either!"

At that, the buzz around the table died back down to its regular level with smaller side conversations popping up around between adjacent seats over breakfast. Progress on writing. Plans for the next off-night on the schedule. It all looped around to preparing to play in Daytona just as they were all preparing to leave, with David, Tico, Alec, and Richie especially focused on what to do and who to call if Jon's condition had really gone downhill in the past hour.

Richie squirreled away a piece of toast in a napkin to take back to the bus, just in case Jon would take his offer up on some stomach medicine and needed food with it.

Kip carried nothing physical with him, but had plenty of thoughts to consider over the short ride up I-4 to Daytona Beach that he'd taken back from the mass table conversation.

Rick's story and its outcomes concerned and reassured him at the same time. With all the mixed details, it was hard to really draw a conclusion from it alone without hearing more on Jon's part, and he wasn't inclined to dig any more details out of the hidden keyboardist as he was to offer his own details outside the inner circle of his bandmates.

As for Jon being sick himself, Kip had to question if Rick hadn't been onto something entirely different but subtle with his sick-mind musing, and if his ailment -fever included -wasn't all in his head. Indeed, Jon was probably very tied up with something else, and not out-of-control fans whom Rick used to cover the trail his mind tracked from the gutter.

Kip didn't want Jon to outright suffer for something that had happened so long ago, but he wasn't going to apologize for what he brought on himself. If facing the past was hard for both of them, then that was fair. It didn't really help him to know that Jon was sick, but he took it as best as he could -as a sign Jon's apologies were sincere and that he did have remorse.

What did help for sure was knowing it wasn't over yet and that there was time. There was hope he'd be able to at least resolve the past, rather than having to shut it out with a hundred unanswered questions as to what he did wrong.

Between a satisfying writing session with Paul and going to bed early to get a solid night's sleep for once, Kip was almost feeling back to normal following his talk, save for the uncertainty still resting in the back of his head. Those included, his mind was back in the present -where he wanted it to be -and Rick's sick-minded humor at dinner after accepting Paul's invitation had taken him back to better memories of his Alice Cooper days before he could return from the past overnight -as well as ensuring nobody made it through the evening without ending up in stitches.

Maybe, Kip wondered, that by the time Jon was feeling better, he'd be fully ready to continue their talk together -and with the hard past covered and dealt with, begin figuring out the future.


	8. 6. Runaway

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Florida far behind, Jon makes efforts to recover on the road, and is still turning his talk with Kip over in his head when the band arrives in Greenville. He consults David's advice before abandoning all avoidance and looking toward the next step.

Waking up the morning after his difficult show in Daytona Beach, Jon stumbled through the front of the bus to meet the driver up front.

"Good day, sunshine," the driver snorted, motioning around his head and squinting his eyes in teasing reference to Jon's messy mass of blond curls over his squinted eyes, successfully pulling a groan from him. "Still in distress this morning?"

"Can we pull over at the next rest area? I don't feel good; I need to walk around and get some fresh air." _And try to clear my head with it..._ "I think that'll help if I can move."

He'd had hangovers leave him feeling far worse than how he felt now, which was significantly better than the day before, but for it to drag on so long was miserable, and after spending every possible moment in his bunk and in a backstage couch yesterday, he was too stir-crazy to deal with it by staying down. Thus, he abandoned the curl-up-and-hide approach and looked to the opposite strategy -being hyperactive and winding himself up until he was energetic enough to push through anything.

"We're already turned off on 26 Westbound, so there aren't too many to stop at, but I'll stop if there is one. If you start feeling real rough and we need to take an exit to town, tell me sooner than later. 'Cause once we hit 385 going around the city, there won't be much on the bypass except back into the city and getting caught in traffic."

"Got ya," Jon murmured, turning around and walking back into the main section of the bus. He stopped in the lavatory to splash water on his face and shivered on his way to the cooler to get a drink. It was pretty warm onboard, but the overnight contrast of early April temperatures from Florida to South Carolina was enough to throw him off -especially with having spent most of the past thirty-six hours underneath blankets or under hot stage lighting. That, and his temperature, which was no longer high enough to call a fever, but higher than what he usually ran.

It had driven him crazy with embarrassment, but despite his grouchy responses, Jon was grateful for Richie's handling of their hour and a half long drive out of Orlando. He'd been merciful enough to get Jon something from a corner drugstore that was supposed to treat headaches and nausea, and not the type that came from motion sickness, which Jon had already raided the first aid kit for to receive no relief. Richie's solution hadn't done much, but it had worked just enough to make the difference. Enough to not feel completely overwhelmed with discomfort onstage -which still wasn't much better than if he'd just stood in front of the bus and taken impact.

He'd also been good with keeping him distracted. When Jon woke up and couldn't sleep halfway through the ride, he'd sat with Jon and kept him in stitches with unrelated stories -and laughing at how they had a triad of troublemaking keyboardists together on the road, as had been determined at breakfast in his absence -until Jon felt a different pain in his sides and stomach from the one he'd been feeling and continued to feel after the show.

He needed to get back with Kip and talk to him again -at least to resolve their last conversation. Ultimately, nothing was going to make it all go away until that happened. But, Jon wasn't going to bother Kip into doing it any sooner than he was ready. He knew well enough by the ghost of past embarrassment in Kip's eyes that Kip was protecting him from far worse by leaving the hotel room.

He also needed to let off the stress of the past that had hit him all at once, and judging by the ride yesterday, Richie had already passed the stage of doing anything more than distracting. They were a little over an hour out from Greenville, and it wasn't quite noon yet. Maybe he'd manage to catch some time before or after soundcheck to try talking to David.

After a time he'd lost track of with pacing up and down the bus aisle, with nobody awake to care about it aside from Tico reading something in the back lounge, Jon felt the bus shifting into the right lane, and heard the radio up front buzzing as the driver connected with the other two buses.

"Alright, boss," called the driver, just as Jon finished getting his shoes on and laced up. "We're all stopping -one more mile up ahead. We want to beat afternoon traffic into town, so let's try and make it quick as possible. If you think it's helped as much as it can or if you don't feel it getting any better, hop back on."

"Thanks, man," Jon whispered. "I owe you." He was several good paces away from the bus and toward the wooded dog-walking trail behind the welcome center building when he heard the bus driver calling everyone else with the warning that they were just under an hour away and they weren't stopping again, so anyone who needed or wanted something unaccommodated by the bus had better get up now.

With his hair still tangled, in his face, and flattened from sleep, and clad in a loose t-shirt and track pants, Jon was mostly unrecognizable from how the world knew him to look, and he was fine by it for once when he felt the whole world was watching him when he got off the bus, even with the glorious cover the trail had. _Was this how Kip felt back then?_

Even when nobody seemed to look his way -with the trail empty and all his bandmates and road guests still asleep or preoccupied with the opportunity to get ready for the day in a bathroom that wasn't cramped, to brush teeth without having to use water in a cup from a cooler, and wash up with tap water that wasn't questionable as to how potable it was -he felt too visible.

He quickened his stride, feeling the cool, spring breeze on his face. The fresh air -thick with the sweet, sappy smell of pine pollen that was setting poor Rod Morgenstein off in a sneezing fit as he made his way off the bus and inside -pulled away at his nausea. He heard Tom scolding a still half-asleep Fred to 'go back on the bus and put on clothes'; that just because he didn't see a posted sign saying he couldn't go walking inside in nothing but his boxers and shower shoes didn't mean that he should. The faster the pace he took, the more cool air hit him and the better the effect he'd hoped for came about. 

When he finally heard Tico and David getting off their own bus last and heard David ask where he was, Jon was sprinting laps around the path, and he was no longer bothered by it. It wasn't a graceful a sprint as he might have made any other day. Half asleep, he neglected to run up on his toes, so his shoes loudly slapped against the broken-up asphalt trail with gravel filling its bare spots. A steady rhythm formed in his head with it as he ran, and he focused on it to ground himself. 

Jon ran until the cold soaked up his headache fog and left him feeling energized, and until he felt that he'd successfully run away from whatever was watching him. He stopped inside afterward to remove the evidence of exertion and wind nip to his cheeks with a splash of tap water, colder than what could be obtained on most tour buses. By luck, his timing got him on the median between parking lots which the welcome center building was situated on, just as the first of the crew began making their way back to the buses, and no one aside from his own driver was the wiser of his trail run.

No one was the wiser of that, and very few would be the wiser that he still wasn't feeling too well. However, he doubted the same was for the tension between himself and Kip.

By now, he expected everyone else had some idea. His absence at breakfast had to have been raising a red flag, even if Kip had held perfectly stoic. His avoidance of the common area aside from when he knew everyone with Winger was either onstage or in their own dressing room could have pushed it last night too. He doubted Paul Taylor didn't know something, being roomed with Kip. And Richie knew. Richie's efforts to stay quiet to protect his feelings could only go but so far with his playful nature that could let it slip at any moment, and there wasn't much reason for him to keep quiet left. If he hadn't slipped it, his behavior toward looking out for him would give it away

Inevitably, the cat was going to get out of the bag. There was no running from that.

"Hey, you're looking pretty bright eyed and bushy-tailed under that rat's nest," Richie teased. "Feelin' better?"

"Getting there. Still working on it." _And I still got a lot of work to do on that..._

"Shame you didn't think to work on that mess inside," said Tico as the bus took off in the acceleration lane, followed by the other two. "It'll have to wait until we get there if you don't want to deal with cramped quarters. Lemma's feeling extra good this morning too since he didn't hit his head on a ceiling or wall five times trying to clean up."

In contrast to Tico's deadpan, David mimed trying to brush his mess of hair out in the lavatory mirror, struggling to stay on his feet as the bus speed varied, slamming his elbows into the walls, and hitting his head on the low ceiling by standing up too quick in the doorway until he, Jon, and Richie collectively cracked up.

David looked pleased with himself. "Puts a whole new meaning on banging on the bus!"

Jon groaned. _Time to get back on this and get it done before I can chicken out._ He waited to see Tico head to the lounge, and noticed Richie going up front to the driver -he guessed, to get on the poor man's nerves for fun by asking how much longer they had when he'd already told them.

"Hey, Lemma."

"Whatcha got?"

"Mind if we could talk about something when we get there? Preferably alone?"

David's playfulness all but dropped out of him, replaced by suspicion, and Jon could already feel the shame catching up to him and creeping back on.

"There's something more to you these last two days than just being sick."

He nodded. "I got myself in some trouble."

"You need help? Or just some advice?" David fell back on the couch as the bus took the sharp bend of a clover-leaf exit ramp where the one interstate intersected the other, and Jon barely managed to brace himself up to not fall down on it too.

"What I need..." he muttered, gripping the edge of the small counter across the aisle and collapsing down on the couch next to David in as dignified a manner as he could, "...is someone to confirm to me that what I think I'm gonna try doing isn't getting ready to do something else that's stupid, before I end up any further over my head."

"Alright, soon as we get off the bus. Might as well while the crew's setting up."

As soon as they arrived and found out there was a rehearsal room backstage, Jon and David ducked into it. It was unlikely that anyone else would come flying for it straight off the bus, so they had a window to go undetected.

Knowing it was still tempting fate, Jon leaned against the wall uncomfortably and made quick work of telling David what he'd already told Richie -that Kip was Alice's bassist from the past, his blunder and forgetting for the entirety of three years, and that now he was having to deal with it on the road.

"Well, I think I know for sure why you've been sick -and why you really didn't want to go to breakfast with us either."

"Yeah, and I know it too. I can't just stay moved on and leave the past in the past when the past is right next to us and everywhere we're going!"

"You sure you can't just start over like it never happened?" David squinted and put his finger under his lower lip in thought, noticing something angry sparking in Jon's eyes. "Now, wait -I wouldn't stay that way, since it wouldn't be too nice to lie like that, but to start off and try to ease in so it doesn't overwhelm him-"

"I approached him already and made the mistake of going straight to it, so I really can't now. _Please_ don't tell me how I should have thought that over first," Jon moaned. "I already know."

David took a deep breath and slowly blew it out through his lips without a sound. His exasperated mind wanted to soothe itself by comparing Jon's plea to his own mock one, telling Richard not to give the 'I told you' talk when they'd been flopping around on the floor following the Miami show, but it knew better. This was no laughing matter, even for David Bryan's mind. They were lucky enough to be with good natured bands -this was a recipe for a never-ending inter-band feud with the wrong tempers involved, and Jon's troubles were still playing with fire. Playing with fire in a drought area if the first words he'd spoken to Kip were rubbing it in his face.

_Oh, someone -anyone -help me. Jon, what have you managed to do this time?_

"How long has this been going on?"

"Went up to him backstage in Miami."

"Ahhh..." David couldn't keep from smirking then. "I see."

"Yeah, that's where I was. Not hooking up with a girl behind the stage like you all probably thought."

"Hooking back up with the one night stand you had -I remember how much you went on about him before that show too."

"Lemma, the scariest part of it was that I really did mean to carry that one on -and I know you remember that part too." Jon began to full-on rant, pacing before David and motioning with his hands.

David sighed and nodded to show Jon that he was listening. He opted not to say that when Jon stopped talking about Kip after that night, he thought they'd had an immediate falling out.

"...When we were getting ready to take off, it took me a couple of weeks to figure out where I'd seen him before. With a picture, name, and everything! We're not even talking about remembering what we did together, because that took longer with being in denial...

"I only knew for sure after I saw him onstage, and for better or worse, I know I have to fix what happened even if it's just to end it properly -and the only way I could think of to get it through my head to know for sure was to watch him offstage. Yeah, that was stupid, but who thinks straight after realizing they did all that?"

"I hear you."

"The thing is, he doesn't even act like he's that mad over it." Jon threw his arms out to his sides incredulously. "If it happened to me, I'd be _pissed."_

"Of course you would." David knew he would have been too. It was only fair that someone would be. "It's not just being let down, it's embarrassing."

Jon seemed to deflate a little.

"I think he played tough too while we were talking. He didn't deny it was hard, but I think it was worse than what he's even saying. I think I really hurt him."

"Even if he's not doing too bad now, you probably did." David shrugged. "It's not hard to believe he wouldn't want you to think it hurt as much, for whatever reason you could say why. He might not even realize it all either. And if he was mortified back then, letting that show now past a point wouldn't help it. You don't walk up to the bully on the street and expect it to get any better by letting them get the satisfaction of knowing how much they got to you."

Jon gulped, because that was true too. Even being good natured in conversation, his high status had the potential to have an intimidation factor. Maybe it hadn't intimidated Kip as a hired young gun while they were together, but in their conversation, Jon knew it made the abandonment look far worse than it was. Kip had managed to lunge from underneath him and take him from above in the back lounge, the dark hair, clothes, and blood making him look like the evil vampire preying on the cliche, innocent blond-hair and blue eyed victim, but by the next night, Jon had lost his innocent status entirely with one quick and lasting slip of the mind.

"I know it sounds pathetic when I was the one who didn't give it a second thought all those years, but I don't feel good at all about it, Lemma..."

David didn't mind listening to a rant, no matter how pathetic. He was used to it, and patient with it. As a keyboardist in the world of rock and roll and in the age of metal, he _had_ to be. There were a boatload of critics -sometimes even managers -who could unleash some of the nastiest comments on any band with a keyboard player over how a synthesizer had no place in real, hard rock and roll, no matter how well and hard-driving it was played. Rick's fate under Cinderella's management -and another lapse in Jon's memory in the whirlwind that the _Slippery When Wet_ tour had been -was testament to it. If they did choose to face it head-on and play onstage, to combat it, a keyboardist needed to have a boatload of patience or a boatload of humor -if they didn't already need it while hidden away. While Lemma tended to favor the humor method, there were certain times when it would serve him few favors if it didn't make things entirely worse. Now was one of those times.

He was lucky to be in a band like Bon Jovi -one that hit big fast and was successful enough in the right fanbase to not catch so much flak for being a wimpy band with a permanent keyboard player -and didn't get criticized by name as some might. He was lucky that with his background and the grades he'd gotten in university in pre-medicine, he'd have had plenty of options in and out of the music industry if Bon Jovi hadn't been successful. For the hard, two-faced world of a keyboardist in rock in the 80s, David had it easy, and he knew it.

But it didn't mean he didn't need his defenses, or that he didn't ever use them. Right now, it came down to a choice of taking the stress from Jon, or running from him to leave him on his own and risk it dragging Jon down into one of his bad moods. Those were dangerous, because Jon could be so nice and mean at the same time. He could stay his friendly, gregarious heart-breaker self, yet become passive-aggressive and slip hints of his irritation so subtly that he often didn't realize it until it had built up and everyone was feeling tense. Or, he might get wired and snap at the wrong time -with his ways, it was most likely it would happen to Richie -and soon they'd have a whole-band nervous breakdown. Which made the time and distance to New Jersey feel ten times longer than it was at just the thought.

Sitting back to hear out a rant was _so_ much easier. As long as Jon didn't ask him to do any lifting. Fixing what he'd done in his personal time with Kip was not David's department, nor would he let it become that.

"I know I need to talk to him again. I just don't wanna approach him before he's ready. He was having a rough time at the end of the last one. I know I can probably ask him and he'd tell me, but I just -I don't want him to think I'm gonna forget again, but I don't want to deny him his space either, you know? There's not much privacy on the road to begin with."

"Maybe you could try the rom-com approach and send him a note?" Seeing that the critical stage of Jon's rant was over, and that Jon's spirits were falling fast, David tried to begin injecting humor again.

Jon groaned.

"Personally, I'd just go and ask, but seriously -if you don't want to get in his space too soon, just scribbling anything to say that he can find you when he's ready could work -but you have to decide that, Jon."

"No note. If he snaps on me, I deserve it."

"And cut the pity party crap too, it doesn't help like you think it does when you drag it out," scolded David. "You know what I am gonna tell you to do? I can tell you've already told Richie all this, but if you haven't already, you need to tell Tico and Alec that you're in it with him too."

"Lemma, I don't feel like telling the whole world about this-"

"They already knew you had a night with one of Alice's guys; it's not gonna be anything new to them. But they gotta know you're trying to work things out now. Hate to say it, Jonny -you're as easy-going as they come, but sometimes when you get past a point, you start getting a little testy."

"How about now, Lemma?" asked Jon, barely managing to crack a smile in hopes of cheering himself up, because he knew that was true -for all of them.

"I can't be the judge when you know more than me. We're all gonna be a little more sympathetic if we know what the problem is. And you'd better believe that it'll be easier when you can just tell us you're going to find Kip if you're looking backstage. At least then if Rich starts asking for you, we can tell him we know where you are and get you if you cut it too close -so he won't put you back under patrol again."

Jon gave a pained laugh this time, and David joined in, momentarily regaining his playful demeanor.

"You should have seen him. He was all red in the face; I thought he was gonna pull a Yosemite Sam. _Ooooh!_ " The keyboardist scrunched up his face in anger to match his vocal imitation and made motions with his hands around his face to suggest steam from the ears.

"Don't wind him up again. Really. He already has to deal with us on our own, and we're Looney Toons around here. One of these days, we'll make him lose his mind in the middle of the tour. And I think you'll have an easier time working it out with Kip if you don't have to work out a disagreement with the crew too."

"Alright, I'll tell them." Jon stood up. "I think I might wait until after the show, or since we're off tomorrow, that might be good. I'm starting to feel better -I want to get through it quick -but I don't want to get them stirred up before we go on."

"Tomorrow. When we don't have a show. I don't care when you get back with Kip, but I'm gonna hold you to telling us; Richie and I will sit on you!"

Jon shook his head and left the room.

With a sigh, David retreated to the corner of the rehearsal room they'd hidden in, where his portable practice keyboard stood -much lower than the synthesizer on top of his main keyboard he used for the same purpose as he intended now. He didn't bother with dragging over a chair or adjusting the height to a natural level for playing standing up as he usually would during practice and writing.

No, David delivered his attack, standing with the keyboard over a foot below his hips. He compensated by drawing his shoulders together, hunching his back, leaning his chest forward, bending his knees and extending one foot all the way forward until it touched the wall which the keyboard was set against for balance. With his position far more exaggerated than the lowered stance he took onstage, his backset leg was bent at a perfect ninety-degree angle, and his body was nearly parallel to the ground until his hips sloped down. His position combined with his dark stare at the wall left him resembling a dog with its hackles raised, ready to lunge forward.

The chord progression of "Runaway" filled the space, but rather than flitting frantically as the nature of one running on their toes for speed, seeking escape from order and danger, they pounded forcefully as David banged on the keys. His hands mocked how one ran off from a fight in frustration, stomping and clopping flat-footed on the ground. The abnormal lack of grace of the motion wasn't just from playing to vent. Even with his posture, standing with the keyboard so low left his wrists straight above his fingers, rather than having his arms level and parallel to the surface. Unable to get the same force from his wrists, he had to drive each strike from his elbows and shoulders. He had to throw his entire body into it.

He went at it, playing four times through, until his fingertips tingled with the warning that any further would leave discomfort to play through in the evening. Until his lower back began to twitch from playing hunched over so far. Until his arms and wrists felt sore from the unnatural angle they hung at. With it, the weight of Jon's frustration that he'd taken had unloaded onto the keyboard and set him free.

But while David could find an escape to run from what he'd taken off Jon's shoulders, Jon's escape was only temporary. He could take any avoidance measures he wanted, but it would be back with a vengeance as soon as he climbed onstage in the evening, possibly creeping on sooner if he passed Kip backstage in the pre-show madness when everyone was going back and forth between the sets. Everything David had released into the keyboard would spring from the keys and back onto Jon the moment those same chords were struck again onstage in a more natural state of delivery.

Because even had he started off on a better foot in Miami, Jon's rant was ultimately right. _Nobody_ could be a runaway from their own problem when it was traveling beside them on the same road, looking them right in the eyes.


	9. 7. I'll Be There For You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new week begins on the road! While Cinderella goes up to play Greensboro on their own, Winger and Bon Jovi have an extra night off before leaving Savannah. During their downtime off the road, and with the most difficult conversation behind them, Jon and Kip try talking again.

Jon took his extra day off in Atlanta to his full advantage. The way he saw it, it was Thursday the 13th when it could have been Friday the 13th. Winger and Cinderella were playing in Augusta, and he had downtime to take care of a few management-related issues. 

Maybe he didn't have the chance to track down Kip and attempt talking when it was one of the few nights they were staying in different cities and that seemed unlucky, but he'd gotten other work out of the way, and the hot water he'd put himself in with Richard seemed to be cooling off enough so that he wasn't being treated like a kid on a curfew anymore. 

Most importantly to him, he'd stuck to his word from his conversation with David, and let Alec and Tico know what was happening with Kip, and whether because of it or by coincidence, his remaining headache and stomach pains set him free as soon as he did.

It was the eighth day since meeting up with Winger. A new week was starting, and Jon wanted to be optimistic that this one would be better.

By the next day -safe Friday the 14th -Winger and Cinderella were in the Atlanta hotel following their post-performance night ride, and everyone was once again on the road together as they left to prepare for the night's performance, packed for another short night ride into a hotel in Savannah.

Jon lifted the blinds on the bus window to watch the other two buses pulling in behind them.

Tico came up behind him, bracing his hand on the windowsill as the bus made short back-and-forth motions to turn into a parking area that had a sharp turn in.

"What's going on? Looking to catch up with Tom and Eric, or are you trying to find Kip again?"

"I'm not gonna force Kip to say anything tonight if he doesn't want to, but I'd like to touch base with him if I can," admitted Jon, catching a view to confirm that the Winger bus was indeed arriving with them, now with his own bus sideways and Cinderella's pulled around to the other side out of the way. "Since it's been a few days, and you know how-"

"Sounds cool." Tico pushed back from the window as the bus finally came to a stop and the airbrake hissed, lowering the body on the suspension. "We'll cover for you till soundcheck if Rich has a problem."

Jon turned around and looked Tico in the eyes.

"Thanks, man."

Tico just shrugged and smirked before turning to walk off the bus.

When Jon got off the bus, he hung back along the side, waiting to see both other buses come to a stop and begin unloading. He spotted Kip, who seemed fairly calm and collected as he began to walk toward the building the road and venue managers were directing everyone to.

Then he cast a glance to the side and locked eyes with Jon, and the confident glint in his eyes clouded over. It wasn't quite concern, but Jon could see something that wanted to be that beneath something else that bordered on suspicion.

Waving his bandmates to continue onward, Kip took a step in Jon's direction, and Jon set his inhibition aside and began walking toward him, taking it as a sign that Kip might be ready to talk again.

Trying not to impose himself too suddenly in the way he had backstage, he stopped a few paces back, poised to turn around and leave as soon as the first hint he should arose.

"Hey, Kip-?"

"Hey."

The suspicious look Kip had seemed to fade beneath the vaguely inquisitive one again, and Jon settled both of his feet together and firmly on the ground. Maybe he wouldn't have to turn and run after all.

"Are you alright?" Kip took a step toward Jon. "I heard you haven't been feeling too well."

Jon shrugged and spread his hands out at his sides, trying to disguise the double-take he really felt like having.

"You could say that, I guess," he laughed nervously. "I had a couple of rough days, but I've been feeling a lot better since yesterday. I'm actually doing pretty well."

"Good to know." Kip raised an eyebrow and shifted weight off his one leg again.

Jon took a half-step back, unsure whether to take that as a sign of discomfort -he'd last seen Kip do it in their backstage meeting, and just thinking back on that and how much of a fiasco it _could_ have been was uncomfortable enough. 

"I'm not trying to copy you by any means, but after the last time I heard from you, are _you_ doing alright, Kip?"

"I'm doing pretty good myself today, Jon."

_There's something you're not saying that you're wanting to._ Something about Kip's eyes was cutting through Jon with a vengeance -intended or not, and he heaved a sigh before his stomach and sides could get ideas and make the presence of his entire mid-body too obvious again.

"Well, that's good too -that you're alright. On that, Kip, I just wanna say I'm sorry," he said. "For how tough that was the other day, because I know it brought back some things you probably wanted to forget -I know you could have refused to talk at all. If there's anything I can do that might make next time easier on you, I'll try."

He meant it, and he wasn't sure whether Kip believed it or not by the look on his face that wanted to be a smirk, but wasn't quite there yet. Not friendly enough, but something was opening up.

"Come on," he said, motioning to Jon and keeping a side-eye over his shoulder to him as he turned toward the building. "Let's _walk."_

Caught off guard by that, Jon shrugged and then found that he was smirking at himself. "Yeah, I guess there's no reason for us to stand around here."

"We can go around the hall inside while we talk -get a view of what's around here. And we don't need the crew to get the wrong idea with us standing here by the buses. Whatever that might be."

"What, they think we're gonna take off somewhere or have a showdown in the parking lot? I'm not planning on that happening, Kip, whatever it is they're thinking."

Kip put his palm over his face and ran his fingers into his hair with a sigh as he followed the turn of the hallway.

"Please, no. We're not gonna have a fight. Maybe I coulda fooled you last time, but I really don't want that either."

Having figured out that -being much more clear in intent than shifting off one leg -was one of Kip's stress tics, Jon opted to change the subject. He found that it was a little less tense even with the uncertainty, moving about instead of being planted in place and staring each other down; maybe Kip was on to something more with the walking.

"I know you have soundcheck starting as soon as the bare minimum of the stage is set up, so this probably isn't the best time for you to talk."

"Not the worst, but it could be better. It would be a couple of days, but we _do_ have a night off in Savannah. Cinderella's going up to North Carolina on their own," Kip noted. "That's on Sunday, because today's Friday, I'm pretty sure -I still haven't figured out always keeping track of what day of the week it is, but I think I got that one."

"You did -Saturday, we play there, Sunday we have off, and we're all off on Monday -but we're on the bus overnight to wherever it is we have first back in South Carolina. I've gotten better at it with time, but it still is easy to lose it night to night." Jon felt a spark of hope light up in his chest. "So are you thinking what I'm pretty sure you are?"

"I _think_ so. I don't know, Jon. Are you ready to have another long talk?"

"Are _you?"_ asked Jon. "I'll do whenever; if you don't mind me being straightforward for once, Kip; I was the one who fucked up. I'm not going to expect you to hang back for me every time. I'd like to work around my schedule some too, so it's fair."

"I'm ready, Jon." Kip stopped mid-stride and gracefully turned around on the spot to look him straight in the eyes. "But, the only way this is gonna work for either of us is if you stop hanging back for me every time too like you're afraid of me. We already talked about what happened, I've set it aside again, and that's enough on it for now. If you're ready, I'd like to get on what I was pretty sure you were hoping for too. I stopped us before we could get there the last time we talked for _our_ own good. But, since we didn't get to know each other the way we expected to back then, I'm ready to try it now."

"Then I'm ready to talk," said Jon, promptly following as Kip resumed their movement through the hallway. "I'm up for Sunday in Savannah -I'll find time, and if you have time too, we'll do it."

"I don't know if you guys have anything planned, but anything later in the evening before we have to be on the bus, we could figure out. If tomorrow night isn't super late, I could easily do early in the afternoon before you might be doing anything. We have a day off and Reb's gonna want to sleep in -he's not leaving the hotel before 2:30 without an endeavor on our part."

Jon bit the inside of his lip to keep from laughing, smiling and shaking his head instead.

"Yeah, I know that one. Usually, I get up earlier -I might not be as energetic when I'm first up, but I'll get with it pretty quick." He paused to think for a moment, then lit up.

"How about this? If we arrive at the hotel at the same time, we can let each other know how we're feeling on it. If you get back before me -because I _know_ I'm not gonna get back to the hotel with everyone before you guys do -you can put a note under my door to say if you want to try earlier in the day or not. I'll get my room number from Rich tonight -I can sneak it to you when we're setting up for tomorrow night."

"Sounds like a good plan -gets around what's most likely to get in the way if we can stick to that." Kip nodded. "We'll try for that -let's just be ready to find each other when we arrive tomorrow so we can pass that along before everyone's running all over the place."

Jon's eyes widened as the sound of something wheels rolling down the hallway around the bend ended with a loud clatter, thump, and resumed again.

"Speaking of which, I think they already are now."

Kip smirked and shook his head.

"No. That's probably Reb on his skateboard, and if he's had enough time to get going on that, they're probably gonna be calling for us any second, so I'd better get where I'm supposed to be."

"I probably should too, before I get in trouble again when I just got out. Alright, I'll see you Sunday -in Savannah." Jon started to turn around and find the dressing room number he knew he had.

"Jon?"

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for coming to me just now," said Kip. "I appreciate it."

Jon could have sworn he saw the faintest hint of a real smile in Kip's eyes before he turned around and they parted ways.

While Atlanta held a particularly large and energetic audience in store for them -more than the average arena crowd Jon saw from night to night -and made for a long, exciting night, Savannah was relatively calm. Almost anti-climactic following Atlanta, but Jon found more than one good thing in it. Cinderella was able to start the process of packing their bus and equipment at midnight to get a better chance of being on the road to Greensboro ahead of schedule -a good thing for them, as the ride looked deceptively shorter than it really was on the map. 

More importantly to himself, he would get extra rest overnight, and was easily able to find Kip on arrival back to the hotel to make plans for the early afternoon.

Jon went down in the hotel lobby at 1:30, still carrying his second cup of coffee of the day and questioning whether he should have gone without the additional caffeine fix when he met eyes with Kip. Too late now, he figured; his heart was already fluttering, and he would just have to hope he wouldn't get jittery when they started talking.

If he did, Jon was becoming increasingly more comfortable with the idea of being the one to suggest they walk this time.

"Good morning," greeted Kip. His tone was slightly facetious, and Jon couldn't help but appreciate that. On their road schedules with being up until that sun was just under the horizon, anything before 2:30 felt like morning -even on the days Jon was up well before noon.

"Up bright and early," Jon played back.

"I came down an hour ago -Reb's still knocked out last I checked." Kip tossed a newspaper he'd been skimming through back where he'd picked it up on the end table beside the sofa he'd settled on.

"I was on my own again last night, so we can go talk there if you want -or we can stay here," Jon offered.

"I think we'd better walk outside if we're not gonna go in a room, just in case. Maybe next time we could do a lobby." Kip was feeling a lot less on-edge compared to the last time he'd been waiting for a talk with Jon, and knew that he'd already been through the most sensitive topics between them, but he wasn't feeling fully ready to trust talking in public yet. 

"Fine by me." Considering how it had helped two days prior, and that he was was feeling jumpy, Jon opted to walk outside, though agreed with Kip that they would go up to his room if need be. When they got outside, the sunshine through the lobby windows proved itself deceptive. The ground was thoroughly wet and puddled in every depression of the sidewalk, and threatening, dark clouds formed patches around the otherwise blue sky.

"Yeah, it rained for like ten minutes when I came down earlier, and then it stopped," explained Kip when Jon asked if he'd seen it raining.

"So..." Jon hesitated with one word out as he searched for a question that wouldn't be too obvious to figure out on his own, but one that wasn't digging too deep for their second real talk too.

"I guess we should start with you this time, since the whole world knows the most interesting things I've done lately. The only thing I don't have to ask about you is that you're not with Alice anymore. So when did you leave to start this?"

Kip blew out a sigh.

"Aw, man, we might end up deciding we're done walking and going inside before I get through all that. That's a long story."

"I'm alright with that."

"First thing above the rest, I left Alice in the spring of '87, and it wasn't until over a year later in August that our debut album came out, but we had singles coming out in May of '88. It was really a matter of getting time to record everything together between Paul's touring schedule, because he was staying with Alice until we had releases."

"So you left Alice before him, but already had plans for it," said Jon.

"I guess you could put it that way. I had plans; Paul was willing to leave Alice and work with me once enough came together to know we'd be getting somewhere soon. We had some things we'd been passing back and forth in our spare time on the road -the spare time we had when we weren't doing naughty things or getting up to trouble and driving Alice crazy-"

"You? Up to trouble on the road? I don't believe it -not from the guy I saw in '86, looking all innocent -covered in blood and in need of rescue." Jon tried to reciprocate the playful sarcasm Kip had shown him in the lobby to keep the mood light. Like the patchy sky above, he still felt the ominous tension from their last talk, but since Atlanta, something more lighthearted was showing through.

And then something beautiful really did show through the clouds.

Jon heard a noise -short-lived, but joyous. Kip laughing. He looked to his side just in time to see Kip's smile, the amusement in his eyes, and the slight ducking of his head -ever so slightly bashful at the reminder of the past.

He didn't realize it was so contagious that he was smiling too until Kip shook his head and groaned.

"Oh, stop that. Actually, we really didn't get too out of control with the partying and stuff -I think getting in your bus was one of the wildest things I did if you don't want to count dancing in a lobby without pants since it was on a dare."

This time, Jon was laughing. _I could see that,_ he thought, wishing there wasn't so much time and distance between them due to his error so that he could say it aloud.

"He has the patience of a saint with everyone, because I don't think he could have expected half the things we would do. And he especially was patient with me and how I ended up leaving him hanging right before he had a tour in Europe -that was the one thing I don't think any of us expected, and I know I didn't."

"Sounds like I'm in for an interesting story," Jon noted, "not sure in a good or bad way."

"Depends on how you look at it -what it meant then compared to now," Kip decided. "I wouldn't say it started out interesting -it was just a typical night backstage. Unless it's a rough night that knocks you out like the one we had in Miami last week, once you catch your breath and get something to drink, you're still pretty wound up. With everything happening on Alice's stage, some of us could really get wound up. That night was actually a show in a break in the tour, so we'd gotten some extra rest beforehand too, and we were just insane coming offstage. So we were all around the backstage complex between dressing rooms, chasing and pretending to attack each other -still in all our stage costumes looking scary while we were doing that. Not anything bad, right?

"It turned out that some fake blood got spilled in one of the common rooms, and we didn't know about it. There actually was someone on the crew who was trying to clean it up and had gone to get something -he just hadn't gotten back when Paul, Ken, and I went barreling into that room. They'd managed to end up chasing me, and I wanted to circle around the outside of the room so I could loop back around on them as they were coming in and corner them at the door so I would be the one chasing them down the hall again."

"Not a bad strategy."

"It would have worked too, except that I maybe got three strides into it before I stepped in the blood and it all went wrong."

Kip took a pause, and while Jon could see by the curling of his mouth on one side and the squinting of one eye that he was trying to remember it, he felt the flutters in his chest grow the longer the pause drew out. _Definitely a good thing we walked,_ he decided.

"I _think_ what happened was the sliding jammed my leg in -the one that I was pivoting around on as I was turning -I could feel myself hyperextending it and I tried to compensate by pulling that leg up quick. But I was leaning too far and moving too fast to keep my balance like that, and I went down on my side. There wasn't enough time to straighten up so I could just fall on my ass and only hurt my sense of pride." Kip chuckled sardonically. "What I guess happened there was I still had my knee twisted up funny underneath me when I landed. I don't remember how I had it -it hurt so bad my vision blanked out and I couldn't even think about trying to get up."

Jon sucked the insides of his lips against his teeth to keep from gaping stupidly as his eyes widened.

"So I didn't see anything until Alice came to see what happened; Ken apparently panicked and ran to get him, and Paul told me he was sick because he heard something I'm glad I didn't hear -I felt enough without hearing. According to everyone else, he went into shock and stood there until he got told to go do something. Any way you put it with whatever I didn't see, we were all thinking 'oh, shit'."

"Did you tear a ligament?" The thought Kip had a recent serious injury with how much jumping, spinning, and running around onstage he had seen from him while hiding behind the stage was mind blowing to Jon. The only sign of it was the shifting of weight onto one leg he'd noticed, and suddenly, it made sense.

"No, but I did stretch a few, and I was lucky there, because I'd have a lot more problems now if I did tear anything. I've still been having to do some exercises and make sure I don't stand with it locked for too long -there still is a little instability. But I got a few complete fractures on impact that Paul and Ken heard -and with the kind of recovery I was gonna need for those, going to Europe was going to be too much of a hassle and a risk with the healing. So, to sum up without going through what I did have to do about it, that was the end of my shows with Alice."

Jon tried to think of a way to say how he felt about it without sounding pitying. Of all the ways to end time in a band, he couldn't think of a way much more painful.

"God, Kip, that's something-"

Before he could continue his thought, the small trees around the front walk of the hotel they'd been walking up and down all listed with a strong, loud wind that tore through, and the sunlight faded behind a cloud.

"Uh-oh," said Kip, looking up to the sky, "we might wanna go-"

As if on cue, the clouds busted loose and rain came washing down.

_"-Inside!"_ yelled Jon, just before Kip spun around and sprinted back down the walk toward the front of the lobby. Jon could hardly keep up with him, and caught up just in time to spring through the front doors with him. By that point, he'd built up so much momentum that he was ready to propel himself right across the lobby and make it to the back hallway with the stairs before he could lay eyes on the elevators that were increasingly terrifying to him every day -even worse since realizing how Kip managed to slip forgotten through the cracks of his wildly repetitive road life.

But Kip stuck his arm out to the side in front of him, pushing Jon's chest firmly with his fingers and stopping him in place.

"Wipe your feet on the mat," he warned, dragging his own feet beneath him to scrub the soles of his shoes against the fibers. "This kind of tile on the floor in here is slick like the same kind that took me out -you don't want to run on it wet. Very slippery."

He smirked impishly, and Jon groaned at the pun he'd just made, though the feeling inside his chest was the opposite of what the sound he made might have suggested. Was this a good sign? How much of this kind of stuff had he missed out on for three years he could have had?

"While we're on the topic of physical injuries, I know I'm up on the fifth floor, but are you good taking a lot of stairs?" Jon dragged his feet over the mat, shook the raindrops out of his hair, and eyed the elevators wearily as he and Kip began walking through the lobby.

"I climb stairs for one of my restrengthening exercises," said Kip with a shrug. "I'll probably go up those four flights and not even blink as long as you're not expecting me to carry my luggage that far."

"Okay." Jon walked with Kip to the stairs, feeling relieved.

"On that thought," said Kip as they reached the landing of the third floor, half the flights behind and half ahead, "is there some reason you like the stairs other than staying fit?"

"I don't have any concrete reasons." Jon shook his head, pushing himself up the last half-flight that always felt too long no matter how many flights he'd climbed. "Just last year, I think it's just from how much touring I've been doing and how many hotels I've been through night after night where I've used them, and I get nervous."

"No bad experiences with them?"

"No, not really. I don't know; whenever I cram in with the guys and all our luggage, every night it feels more like it's too tight, and when I get in those ones that bounce before the doors open, or they make extra motion to start -I know it's not gonna happen, but I feel like it's just gonna plunge on us. If it's just up to the second or third floor, I'll carry my luggage up, and the third floor is usually pushing it, but each night I contemplate trying to make it to the fourth floor.

"And I guess it could be a thing from being on the road too long; I'm not the only one I know who gets a little on-edge after months on the road." Jon unlocked his door and held it open for Kip. "I was talking to Tom last night; and I know Jeff gets scared of falling out of his bunk and doesn't like walking around the bus without a light. And they've been on the road awhile and says Jeff's been a little cranky after their overnight rides, so he's been concerned about that -he was telling me so I wouldn't be shocked if he got testy with my guys."

"That makes sense," said Kip, settling down in a chair. "I don't think there's anything wrong with any of that. I actually like having a light with me on the bus too, but sometimes if we've been on the road for months solid, Paul starts worrying that someone's gonna get hurt -and even if all we get for a break is just half a week at home, it makes all the difference for him. Of course, since he's usually thinking I'm the one who's gonna get hurt, I can't really promise him it'll be fine with my track record."

"But that was something none of you guys expected either," ceded Jon. "That tangent couldn't have looped around any better either."

Kip raised an eyebrow and sat back. "Yeah, it really couldn't have. Where were we? -I was off the road, and I decided that if I was going to be off the road indefinitely, what better time to try starting my own project -not just because I had the time and resources I didn't have before that, but I'm not the kind of person who can just sit in the apartment all day sulking and waiting to get better."

"I know that one," said Jon, feeling another connection that hadn't been there before. "It's like, sometimes before we go off the road to record, I want to go home and just do nothing at all for a few days -just relax and not think about anything. Sometimes, we get two weeks off before we have time slots in the studio. And I'm lucky if I can make it to the end of two days without getting so bored and needing something to do -I don't know a better way to put it other than feeling like a dog that's been locked in the house all day, ready to rip the couch to shreds."

"That's a good way of putting it." Kip smiled sadly. "I had a few days of hopping around on one foot because I couldn't sit still any longer. And it would have been stupid to not start on the project, because I would have been stir-crazy pretty fast even if I wasn't crutch-bound and could have gotten out easier. Then I'd start wishing I was on the road and getting depressed. I'm not gonna go there if I can control it.

"The good-bad news of it -good for me, but not fun for him -Reb was still stuck in the session loop and getting fed up with it too. I think the 'tear the couch up' was closer to reality for him than for me, because he had a few riff tracks of his own and couldn't find a band to join up with. Then I called him and he went crazy -so I took him onboard to write some stuff. We moved in with each other too, and that was probably the worst part of being crutch-bound, but once we had ourselves set up, he and I were pretty dangerous with each other. Especially when Paul sent me tracks of what he and I had already worked on, and Alice helped us get into a studio to record demos. Reb had connections from his sessions we were able to use to help get a record deal -though we got screwed over in a couple of ways we've figured out to avoid with our next one.

"So he and I were working, and we needed a drummer. Found out Rod Morgenstein was available through management, and all of us knew The Dixie Dregs and were really excited at the idea if he was up for it. I think the closest I saw Paul to leaving Alice before he really had to was when he found out Rod was going to be with us."

"Finding out you're gonna work with one of your heroes?" asked Jon. "I'd freak out too."

Kip sighed. "I may or may not have gotten scolded by Alice because -why did I have to call him when they were all stuck in close quarters on a bus and get him hyper for them to deal with?"

"I can imagine if well enough with Lemma when he gets hyper on our bus. If I were to judge by how you guys look onstage alone, I would think Rod would be the hyper one though."

"Rod is hyper, just not in the way Paul is. And starting work with him was like a dream -not only because of what he could do for us, but he really is one of the nicest guys to work with. And, that's the long story of how Winger happened."

"Well, you made it happen against the odds with that ending," said Jon. "Assuming I've heard some of the things you wrote with Alice that he couldn't use that you were telling me about, you had even more going for you than I already knew -which was a lot already. I wish I could have heard more about it sooner, but at least there's now."

"Alice said he knew I was gonna end up on my own -before you did too. Of course, I wanted to do it -maybe I wasn't expecting it to happen this soon, but I learned a lot from Alice that helped me along." Kip cringed. "I still could have done without breaking bones -and maybe a few other experiences -but at least it all worked in the scheme of things."

_I hope this'll work out too,_ Jon added silently, feeling certain that he was one of those other experiences on par with Kip's injury.

"How about you, Jon? From what I gathered on a few outings, most of your guys haven't changed from what you told me about then."

"No, not really," said Jon. "Maybe we're a little quieter on some nights at the party because endless months of touring will do it. Richie and Lemma are crazy, just the same."

"Oh, yes." Kip smirked. "Ask Richie about breakfast in Orlando. Or maybe you'd be better to ask Tico. Paul got in on it too."

"I don't know why, but I thought those two would get along," Jon murmured. "Tico's our guy holding us together -by beat and by being our most reasonable. Alec's a little more quiet these days; I think he's beginning to value time to rest and be by himself more, but he'll still hang out and party with us. We had another album and more hits, and it's been the same old since these last few years, really.

"I'm sure management would like us to get another album out, and I have ideas, but considering how long we've been out, how young we still are, and just knowing we're not really getting anywhere new at this point, I'm really considering with everyone if at the end of this tour, we just all take a break for a couple of years. Work on solo projects we've thought about for awhile; settle down some -some of us have some problems we probably need to deal with too -and maybe I won't be able to just rest up for a couple of years, but I can't assume the same across the band."

"But that's not gonna be it, is it?" asked Kip. "I've thought of doing classical compositions someday, but I don't think I'll give up Winger for that."

"No, I plan on Bon Jovi still being around." Jon sighed. "I just get the feeling that maybe if we don't take a break and do our other ideas while we're still all good with each other, keeping on past a certain point is gonna push that too far, and then maybe we will have problems that'll be harder to fix later. You guys are still so early in in the touring with Winger, but depending on how your touring continues, you'll probably get what I mean."

Kip nodded. "Maybe. It's just nice to be in a band where everyone gets along, no questions asked. We were pretty good with Alice, but there were still some scuffles there. Everyone here is level-headed enough to work out a disagreement without fighting over it. I guess if something came up and taking a hiatus would be the thing to keep it together in the long run, I would. In that case, we've had our hiatus since our last talk -I do feel better about this one."

Jon shifted uncomfortably, and as he did, Kip stood up to walk about the room again.

"I guess we've got a lot to think about now."

"Are you kidding?" asked Kip.

"Truth be told, I didn't really think about that as something to talk about until we got to it," Jon admitted. "I was thinking more about what's already happened, but I guess the most interesting stuff I've got hasn't happened yet."

Not only with what to talk about, but Jon had a feeling, his experience with Kip too. Kip, who was quiet as he passed through the room a couple of times in thought. He looked stressed out facing it all at once. The sound of the rain pattering on the windowsill took over. 

Jon felt like throwing unrelated questions to break it all up, and held his tongue until Kip's fourth pass through the room left him overwhelmed when he paused to make a look at the abandoned chair, only to continue pacing.

"This is gonna seem like an odd question, but when I was looking through the tour documents -what's Reb's nickname for? Is it short for something, because I don't see him being nicknamed that for being a rebel type."

"Oh, it depends on what kind of a day it is," said Kip. "He's pretty shy to stand up to someone who gets to giving him a hard time, but I wouldn't put it past him to go against anyone if enough happened. But it is a nickname that comes from his full name. His actual first name is Richard. Just don't call him that. He won't appreciate it, and I'd say between your manager and Richie, and Rick too, you already have enough to keep track of already."

Jon grinned. "Yeah, you think?"

"Why not? I also get the idea that Reb's used to it meaning he was in trouble as a kid," Kip conjectured. "If I'm right on that thought -I'm not gonna embarrass him by asking -I probably wouldn't want to hear it either.

"That's me with my middle name," said Jon with a rueful look. "I knew I fucked up when I heard it."

"Well, _Jon Francis_ -for him, it's like when I was growing up. If I heard anyone say 'Charles', it was always 'crap, what'd I do this time?' If I didn't already know. Which more often than not, I did." Kip grinned ashamedly. "But then if the middle name followed it, I was probably running like the wind to find a place to hide."

This time, Jon didn't resist cracking up. It felt safe to do it without making it worse -especially with Kip's more playful scolding which he could not object to.

"But if you were the younger brother, that really couldn't have happened too often now," he teased back.

"Yeah, I had the little brother advantage," Kip admitted. "I probably drove Nate nuts until I could help him form his jam band."

"I won't even ask Matt if I drove him nuts -I know I did, and he had the little brother advantage over _me."_ Jon sighed.

Kip stopped to stand beside him, next to the bed. Almost leaning against the edge.

"Funny, all the things we have in common aside from the obvious of fronting bands."

"That's the biggest downside of it all, really," Jon admitted, feeling two feet tall on the pedestal the world had him on.

"What is?" Jon felt the edge of the bed dip beside him and realized that Kip had -likely without the intent to -taken a seat there, and he suddenly felt the need to stay absolutely still. Not because he didn't want Kip beside him, but the opposite. He didn't want Kip to startle away.

"You lose your real identity in it," he said quietly. "You follow a hectic schedule of performing and being that showman fronting it all, and being the showman afterward at the party. And it's fun, but it's taking half of your real self out and concentrating what's left. All that night to night, and if you're like us, you write the things you want to write, but it's only what that one half wants, because whatever the other wants isn't radio friendly and won't hit with the same fans, and management agrees that's not a good idea."

"And that's why you've considered the hiatus, really," said Kip. "It's the same reason why I've planned doing the classical stuff solo someday -I want to take Winger in a prog direction, but there is some pushback, and I know I can't go but so far off with it."

"It's a wise thing to consider," Jon agreed, "and you're still strong in it, because sometimes I feel like the most unwise things I do on the road are things I wouldn't do if I was entirely there. And the worst mistake I made when I let myself lose my identity, Kip, was letting myself leave you behind."

This time, when silence fell, there was no pacing. Just absolute stillness. Even the rain stopped, leaving a semi-sunny, semi-overcast sky.

"Uggh, I don't know how to process all this." Kip groaned, and his stoic monotone broke through. He leaned forward and scrubbed his hands up over his face to comb his fingers back into his hair. This time, he ran his fingers all the way to the back of his head as he would have in the past before his hair was too long to do it with ease. He extracted his fingers just behind his ears, giving it a light toss to fluff it out as he did.

"I can't figure out how either," Jon agreed. Tiredly, he slumped forward, braced on his arm that contacted the bed at his side.

He noticed that Kip had leaned over braced on an arm too, and wished that they could just lean on each other instead.

But Jon could tell by their few true interactions now that Kip wasn't the most easily trusting person to begin with, and he'd hurt trust that had barely formed to begin with. He couldn't push Kip to it so soon when he was proceeding with the caution he had. It wouldn't have been fair, and Jon knew and respected it, because he struggled with trust too. He knew he would have a hard time recovering if one of his own bandmates left him behind.

"We're on good terms. That's a start, and we'll figure out what comes next as we get on up the road." Uncomfortably, Kip checked the time. It was almost three. If they wanted to do anything in town before leaving, they would need to pack up and get their bags stowed for the night on the bus pretty soon.

"And I'll be ready to work it out with you. You can ask to talk to me even if I'm not feeling great, for that matter." Jon sighed, feeling a little guilty for hiding out so long and silently wishing the pain didn't come back. "And you can tell me to stay away if you need that too; we'll just stay open -I'll stay open like you said. And I'll try to give you my real self who's not gonna just disappear again."

"Jon," said Kip, and his quiet monotone was so cutting, he might as well have been reading into him without looking. "No matter how we might end a talk, unless we both know for sure we're not gonna be talking for awhile, I don't want you to be afraid to find me the next day if there's something to talk out.

"I guess I just don't like having bad blood in a band, or with other bands. I like to know what happened and get it in the past so it's done. And yes, what we had in the past ended bad, and that did hurt to talk about. But that's all done now -we talked about it, I know what happened -it's clear, so there is none. I really am hoping to keep it that way if everyone else out there will let it happen, and right now it all looks good, but again, who knows what'll happen in time."

"You'd be better than them because of it," said Jon. "If you want to find me in Columbia, if we have the chance, I'm good with that. Or not, if maybe we need some time to think all this out. But unless management keeps me tied up, I'll be there, and if they do, I'll be there the next night, or after the show. I'll figure it out."

He found himself startling as Kip reached his hand over in front of him, holding it out with intention to take his. He supposed it was a gesture of peace, or maybe a sign they really were still in it together. Without hesitation, he took it and held it loose and gentle in his own.

At first, it felt the same as Kip closed his fingers around his hand. However, after a moment of heavy silence -hand in hand, still no eye-contact -he felt something different. A tightness -not painful or uncomfortable -around his hand as for a split second, Kip squeezed tighter and sighed dolefully.

Heaving a sigh of his own, Jon squeezed too. They held on, only making eye contact just before letting go, and before Kip departed for his room at a slow, contemplative stride, replaying their encounters as he made his way back to his room to pack up for another typical night on the road.


	10. 8. Somebody Save Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Following a particularly difficult night on the road leaving Savannah, and another in Columbia, Kip finds himself faced with a decision about Jon which only he can come to terms with. While nobody can help him with it, he finds he can use some help in other ways -and has someone to talk it out with who might just help him arrive at some answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tom Keifer to the rescue!

Kip barely slept a wink that night.

He was glad to be on the bus overnight to Columbia, rather than in a hotel sharing an open room without the division of bunk curtains and claustrophobic walls to hide behind, and without the road noise to cover just how restless he'd been with his insomnia.

He had the feeling Reb was still annoyed with Jon, and an even stronger one that Reb would become fully upset if he'd been aware of the kind of night he was having. Kip didn't want that to happen, for a seemingly endless list of reasons he'd run through his head whilst lying awake. Of the more likely ones, he especially didn't want Reb stressing out over it when it didn't need to be a whole-band problem. Regardless of what had been the case with Jon, Kip also didn't think he deserved the surprising amount of wrath Reb was capable of holding toward someone when they made him mad enough. After uncovering and releasing his deeply-held feelings on Jon, Kip didn't see the reason to drag it over his head any longer.

Experience told him well enough that despite initial jokes played, Paul would quickly turn serious and stress out too until he knew he was feeling somewhat better. The worst outcome would have been both of them staying up all night talking about it. Not terrible, but depriving Paul of sleep on a break night during a rigorous tour felt unfair, and it was asking for trouble. An overly-tired Paul could range anywhere from overbearingly silly and hyper, to depressed and lethargic -and whichever came about was equally prone to getting sick on a rigorous schedule.

Kip figured that Rod would have been the easiest to talk with if what he'd felt really warranted it, but had similar enough reasons to think that Rod shouldn't have had to deal with it either. Nothing bad had happened in the time they'd met up on the road, and he hadn't felt pain outside of his first talk with Jon. 

He would have readily asked to talk the moment his situation had the chance to become problematic for them all, or if it effected his mood enough that he could see himself acting unfair, but for now, it didn't. Kip felt that beyond making his bandmates aware of it so that nothing strange came as a surprise, it didn't need to become a whole-band problem.

So he kept his internal dilemma over Jon to himself, and it in turn kept him awake.

Thanks to that road noise and everyone having their curtains pulled, nobody saw Kip get up twice and walk up and down the bus aisle to try and break his hyperactive train of thought. Nobody knew that he completely untucked his sheets tossing and turning in a vain attempt to get comfortable, or that when he woke up from the hour and a half doze he managed sometime in the wee hours of the morning, his fitted sheet was bunched up underneath him and his blanket and flat sheet were pulled up across his chest to leave him uncovered from the waist down. And going unseen, he wasn't as embarrassed as he could have been when he got up to put it back and give himself a fighting chance of falling asleep again.

Though, having a reaction like that to somebody who had walked out on him who he hadn't thought of in years was plenty embarrassing regardless of being alone in it.

He hadn't thought of Jon in years, until he knew they'd be touring together, but following his more recent conversation, somehow, it almost felt as if Jon had been there the whole time in the distance, and Kip wasn't sure what to make of that.

It wasn't that he felt like he couldn't have gone looking for Jon in the hotel in Columbia the next night to talk about it -for that matter, he felt that it was probably his turn to seek Jon out. 

He didn't know what to say to Jon. He'd talked about what had happened in their time apart; Jon hadn't seemed inclined to talk about much when his life had consisted entirely of rigorous touring and recording. It was entirely going forward now, and with the remaining question of how he now felt about Jon, Kip wasn't sure what was going to come next -or what to talk about at all. He couldn't think of anything interesting to talk about that he felt ready to tell Jon about, and if he'd gone looking for him, he'd have had no words to describe his current conflict within. Which left him with no point to go find him.

So he settled into the hotel in Columbia the next night, and found himself facing another nearly-sleepless night with his internal monologue. He accepted his fate this time rather than fighting it, for nothing more than to keep from tossing and turning and keeping Reb awake.

At some point, he dozed off between looking at the ceiling, turning his head to one side to look out the window beside the bed, and to the other side to watch Reb, who had the blanket up to his chin and was making soft, innocent-sounding murmurs in response to whatever was happening in the dream world.

Kip only knew he had slept briefly, because at some point, he'd entered the dream world for a short, stealthy visit of his own. Finding himself in the back of a bus with Jon. Except this time, there was no blood and horror costume. They looked as they did now, and lay together, staring wordlessly into each other's eyes -unsure how to proceed with each other, until Jon disappeared and Kip found himself alone on the bus again.

But Kip had slipped out of his dream reality just as stealthily as he'd slid in, and found himself lying awake once again, watching until light filtered in through the window, and finally, tour management was calling the phone to wake them up for the early hotel checkout time to bus over to the venue and reunite with Cinderella for another all-three show.

By the time they arrived to the venue in Columbia after four hours of sleep across two nights, Kip felt numb to the world and half-knocked out. He was sure he felt no different than if someone had smacked him hard enough to see stars, and he knew it was only a matter of hours before it would start showing. He could only hope it wouldn't until after the show, and that it would be enough to knock him out and make him sleep through the night.

The older venue had less space in the backstage building, and resembled most setups in the Midwest. A common room, and a locker room with showers were inside the back hallway, but tents and trailers set up adjacent to the back of the building made up most of the rehearsal space and dressing rooms respectively.

It was something familiar to places closer to home, and made accessing the cool, fresh, spring air easier. Kip took it to his advantage, heading outside to wake himself up and clear his mind. He walked around the trailers with their tents pitched flush to their doors, curtains down all around. Keeping an eye out for any potential security-breeches who could become unruly, he paused every few strides to hike his injured knee up in front of him, pulling it up to his chest, then pushing his leg out behind him and touching his heel to his back. Fatigue was beginning to manifest itself physically, and in addition to feeling heavy and weighed down all over, his knee felt more unstable than it had in months.

When he'd stretched out well enough to feel that landing from a jump wouldn't break something, Kip walked around the front of the larger trailer and tent that undoubtedly belonged to Bon Jovi, beginning to contemplate seeking Jon out anyway. Maybe hanging out without any real purpose would get them somewhere or tell him something. Or maybe he could talk Jon into telling him some more of his stories, just for the sake of it. And if anything Jon told him really was enough to bore him and he ended up falling asleep, the outcome couldn't have had more negative than positive outcomes at the point he'd reached.

But all was quiet around the tent and trailer, and nothing was visible on the outside suggesting they'd been in and out. They'd left the hotel and arrived early, and the last thing Kip wanted to do was wake someone up if anyone was asleep. So he passed to make a final circle around the setup, planning to head back to his own tent.

He realized his fatigue must have been showing more than he thought, because this time, he passed in front of the Cinderella tent rather than behind their trailer, and just before he could look to his side with the sensation that he was being watched, someone called out to him.

"What's going on, Kip?"

He flinched, feeling more jarred than he ought to have from being half-asleep on his feet, and looked to the lanky, dark-haired figure sitting outside Cinderella's tent with an acoustic guitar laid out across his lap.

Tom Keifer. Kip didn't think he'd met one other young-gun rockstar his same age who was as laid back and patient as Tom. And Kip didn't take that thought lightly either. He knew his bandmates were already above so many others in their world to not have had a single fight since the start of their near non-stop touring, and while it hadn't been anything extreme, Cinderella as a whole couldn't say the same for this particular tour. But for the most part, they all got along well, and Kip felt that Tom in particular practically fit right in with the Winger family in the same way Rick could have fit in with Alice's band. 

Tom had a touch of the troublemaking humor Paul enjoyed -if in a much, much calmer form. He had the same sort of shyness to him that Reb carried, minus the nerves capable of paralyzing him. Perhaps Rod was on-par with the more laid-back demeanor Tom had out of the public eye with both of them being the notorious responsible ones, but it was easy to forget how much older and experienced Rod was with just how well he fit in.

In some ways, Tom almost reminded Kip of a younger, less-experienced, glammed-out Alice Cooper without the evil persona and macabre props surrounding him. The familiarity was just enough for Kip to welcome it rather than retreating on his own to think through his dilemma as he'd mentally resorted to.

"I'm not feeling so great, Tom. Sorry, I'm just not."

"Same crud Jon had last week?"

"No. Well, it's not like I'm sick, just..."

Something seemed to click in Tom's narrow eyes. "You wanna talk about it?"

Kip did a double-take. He'd gotten to know Tom well by now, but it hadn't been so long that he expected Tom would be that welcoming, or to decide if he knew him _that_ well. But the look in Tom's eyes made the resemblance to Alice that much stronger, and the idea of sitting down and venting without having to worry about winding his bandmates up too much _was_ feeling good, save for the subtle fear of being misunderstood.

"I would -but only if you're good with that though, Tom. I don't want to take your time up talking about stuff -it's kind of complicated."

"I've been hanging around here and haven't been doing jack shit, Kip. If I've sat out here with this guitar for an hour and haven't gotten it in me to play a single chord, it's not happening. I still won't have anything else to do for a couple more hours, so forget the time, for all I care. Besides, you look like you got some stuff heavy on your mind, you know?" Tom's lips pulled up into a knowing cringe as he motioned to put his hands over his chest. "Or maybe ...heavy on your _heart?"_

A rare occasion, words failed Kip. His tired eyes met Tom's as the same wince overtook him and he nodded as his remaining inhibitions dissolved.

"Come on over by the tent," said Tom, motioning Kip over as he stood up from his seat, turned around, and held a finger up to suggest he wasn't going anywhere far. "We can hang out here for a bit; the other guys won't mind. They're sleeping right up until soundcheck anyway and probably won't even know. I'll tell you, that ride up to Greensboro was long as hell, and on top of having an extra night, heading back took it out of us. We got in at 4:00 this morning. I just woke up from my nap early is all."

"I take a nap between soundcheck and getting ready for the show usually," Kip admitted, trudging over to stand beside Tom's vacated chair. "I'm gonna need it today."

Tom disappeared through the tent curtains with his guitar and came out a moment later with an extra folding chair in his hands instead. He set it down on the ground, unfolded it, and motioned for Kip to sit down.

"You didn't sleep well last night," he stated rather than asking, having no real reason to ask.

"A couple of nights, actually. Got to thinking and couldn't turn it off." Kip sank down in his chair slowly, hesitating until he saw Tom coming around to sit back down too.

"That's no good." Tom shook his head as he settled next to him. "But it happens -sometimes life on the road gets to you."

_It really does. Got to Jon in a different way then too, and now we still gotta figure out what now..._

"Are you just overwhelmed with it being such a long tour, or is there something in particular that's got you up and thinking all night?" 

"I guess I might as well explain what happened and get it over with so it all makes sense," said Kip, preparing himself to bite the bullet and trust telling someone outside of his bandmates and Jon himself. "It's complicated, and I promise I've already forgiven what happened -I'm not trying to shit-talk anyone by saying what already happened."

"I get your drift. But I'm not saying anything until you're finished. You know, I'd be making a real ass of myself if I was just calling you over here to judge you when you're already down." Tom sat forward in his seat, leaning in Kip's direction, propped on his knees and listening intently.

Kip sighed and tried to smile to keep from looking too forlorn, before going on to tell Tom about his past with Jon in the most minimal of detail -only enough for Tom to know the kind of feeling involved and to understand the meaning of what Jon had promised -then their encounter in Miami, and how they'd been trying to sort it out since their first talk in Orlando.

"...There's nothing bad going on now. I just don't know what to think anymore, and that's really my own problem to figure out. That's really all there is to it, Tom. That's it."

"You know, I've been noticing the two of you have been acting a little different. I had a feeling something was up. Nothing wrong with that -you both have a hell of a reason for it," said Tom, holding his finger up to emphasize his point. With the deepest listening done, he sat back causally in his chair and crossed on leg over the other. "Alright. You know what?"

Kip raised an eyebrow and leaned over sideways in his chair in Tom's direction, tiredly watching him with a sidelong gaze.

"Look -this is my two cents, because I'm not telling either of you what to do. It's not my place. Jon's kind of our mentor in Cinderella like Alice Cooper was for some of you guys in Winger. We didn't play in his band, but he set us up as best as he could for success in getting our first album produced. Yeah, we had some other guys help us out a lot too, but we would not have been this far so soon without Jon. He's a great guy, and when he shows interest in somebody, he usually cares -and more often than not, he's committed. _That said..._ " 

Tom grinned with exasperation, and put his hand on the side of his mouth opposite from Kip to mime whispering as his tone dropped. Though he never spoke it, the message of _these words do not get repeated to anybody_ was clear.

"...Jon can sometimes be a little full of it. And sometimes he gets a little full up on the partying on the road stuff too. He can be airhead from time to time already before you add that in. And anyone who's not on the level of his bandmates or anyone else who's around him most of the time are usually gonna be the ones to feel it."

"Can I ask about that?" asked Kip.

"If I bring it up, it's fair game." Tom shrugged.

"I think I see that's how Rick ended up off the stage, but was there anything else to that with Jon?"

"With our record deal and getting started? I've had to be persistent before," Tom admitted. "Just like with Rick, there were times when he didn't call back or do something when he said he would, and I would have to check that he did it, or call him again, because sure enough, he forgot. I get the drift that you didn't really have that option. You didn't have his number; he only had yours. Now, we usually planned ahead, so when there was a delay, we had a few days to get ahold of him and figure it out -everything really important got done in time. And Rick could have been onstage the first tour if he'd really wanted to. Jon was ready to go to war for him to get it set before we departed, and Rick already hadn't made as many calls as the rest of us had -he honestly decided it wasn't worth the trouble of us having another fight with Andy Johns, and when he asked us to just let it stay the way it was, it wasn't our decision to make anymore."

"So he did ultimately decide that," said Kip, now with the answers to the loose ends of that story.

"He did. He does like to tease Jon for it, but it's more because of how many times he saw Jeff having a panic attack and Eric trying to calm me down because I couldn't get him on the phone and had a cow over it." Tom snorted. "I think I might have gone shriek-register on a couple of deadlines. Honestly, we only saw problems with that in '86 though -maybe in the first couple of months of '87 if that, and that was the _Slippery_ tour time, so that probably had something to do with it. Crazy time for them, you know -biggest hit yet at that time. Between helping us along and with trying to get involved in some of the management on his end, he's been great about staying on top of his commitments the past couple of years since then. He'd stick to whatever he told you nowadays, but he's gotta play by what you're comfortable with too."

"Jon and I saw each other in '86," said Kip. "So that would have been that tour."

"And that was right in the middle of all the action then. But don't feel too bad when you're not the only one he's forgotten to call -related to love or not. And it probably doesn't do much for you for me to say that, but I'm really just trying to say you're not alone. And that it's not personal, you know? Because I'm not excusing what he did, nor should I. Or you for that matter, but that's your call to make."

"Oh, I'm not excusing it," assured Kip. "I forgive him for it, but I'm not saying that it was okay."

"It wasn't," said Tom. "You're the one who had to deal with the aftermath from the start. Yeah, I know he's dealing with it now and I bet that's what he got himself sick on, because he was sick over Rick too, but you had to deal with it in times when he wasn't thinking about it."

"There's that night, you know how it is, after however long you sit in denial when you realize they're not going to call. It happened about a month later, and..." Kip shrugged with his hands out to the side and turned up yieldingly. He hadn't planned to talk about the time in Jon's absence, but it was one thing that he'd been lying awake to, and the weight of it on his chest exacerbating his tiredness left him unable to care any longer.

"...You know what? I'm not gonna lie; I hate to admit it, but I was a little sad for a couple of days after that. And I would have been with anyone else if I thought it would continue."

"You're not the only one out there who'd have been feeling sad over it. Come on, let's be real and no shame while we're at it. We're talking about Jon _Bon Jovi_ here," Tom emphasized playfully. "But I'm sorry. I'm serious, Kip. That was not one of his brightest moves, and we're not gonna try to pretend otherwise."

Kip almost laughed, and managed a smirk. He appreciated the snide humor; it kept Tom from sounding pitying, which he really didn't want after so much time had passed.

"I moved on from it pretty quick, and that's what I try to do. There's not anything else you really can do at that point. I gave up on waiting for a call, because I'm not gonna spend my life waiting on something that's not gonna happen."

Kip could remember the second night after giving up. 'Sad' had really been annoyed at allowing himself to make the naive, rookie mistake -for being too optimistic that it would have worked. Annoyed that he hadn't thought it over better and followed his head rather than his heart. Alice managed to figure it out before he even had -as Alice Cooper always did -because he noticed everything, and Kip knew he wasn't as good at hiding it back then. 

Alice ended up giving him the tough-love talk, somehow managing to be tough yet openly kind and caring at the same time.

_"You gotta watch out when you hook up with people on the road, Kip. Just because it's not some girl looking to spend a night with whoever in a band they can get with doesn't mean it'll be different."_

Kip stayed silent while listening to Alice with the fear of embarrassing himself by talking back. The low voice Alice spoke in during hard talks -so low it was barely audible, and not unlike his own he used when he was serious or angry -had a way of intimidating and breaking down walls all at the same time. It was really what Alice ended up saying, and even more how kind he was being about it, rather than the disappointment of being cast aside that was the hardest to take.

_"It's not that you can't make it work. I don't want it to be something you're afraid to take a chance on -especially someone like you, Kip -because if it does work out, it can work out great. But you gotta realize that the debauchery we get in this camp is probably nothing compared to some of these other guys out there; in fact, I know it is from some of them. Some of these guys are hitting it off with how many others a night, playing between however many cities and however many miles apart -every night -all while having however much alcohol and whatever else they've got in their systems playing with their heads. Just because someone doesn't call back doesn't always mean you didn't mean anything more to them. They could have been screwed up -could be screwed up now. And then that's their problem and their loss. Not yours. And if they decide not to call because they didn't see you as anything more, then that's also their problem. No matter where the two of you end up at the end of all this or why it happened, you'd still be better than them because you had it in yourself to take it seriously when they didn't. You've got a level head on your shoulders that most of these guys don't have, Kip; don't let anyone shake that."_

Thinking back, Kip was almost amused at the unusual amount of drama that had taken place that day. It was a stupid day -probably had been the most dramatic experience with Alice that Kip had, only second to the night of his injury. He'd finished his talk, just as grateful for Alice's advice and encouragement as he was grateful to have kept his composure, and he hadn't gotten to the door to leave before they both heard the kind of yelling down the hall that happened when somebody pushed Kane's buttons and riled him up. Then a door slammed so hard that the walls rattled down the hall. 

With a sigh, and a very tense look on his face, Alice had gone on to deal with another serious talk, and Kip didn't want to know what Alice said in that one when Kane spent the rest of the day looking weary and guarded whenever he was nearby.

There was only one rule Alice had that Kip had ever found odd. Outside of stage acts that used it for effect, at any time they were together as a band, _nobody_ slammed doors between each other. _Ever_. It didn't matter who did it, how frustrating a day it was, or whether it was in the studio, backstage, or at a hotel -anyone who dared to slam a door was going to be in big trouble. And if anyone got caught slamming a door on a dare, whoever sent that dare was in just as much trouble. So in his time with Alice, nobody tried daring Kip to slam one, and Kip was glad to have never been frustrated enough to feel the desire otherwise.

_"It's disrespectful. And it will degrade your relationships with your bandmates if it becomes a regular thing,"_ was Alice's reasoning. He always said he would rather hear a verbal fight with yelling back and forth drag out for hours if a disagreement came to that than to hear the brief booming of a door slam, because while it was possible to work out a problem through shouting -even if not necessarily the best way -no communication took place through a slammed door, and nothing got solved through one either. Having his own band now, Kip had to admit that he'd be pretty concerned as to whether everyone was alright if his bandmates began slamming doors in each other's faces. He'd only experienced it once -the one time Reb had slammed a door on him, and that hardly counted. It had happened on a particularly hard day before they'd really gotten to know each other, or figured out their differences, and Reb was already upset over things Kip had nothing to do with before they'd hit the wall that day.

But whether Jon Bon Jovi really had meant to slam the door behind him when he'd parted ways with Kip, or if the whirlwind of his superstar life had simply created a strong enough draw to wrench it from his hand and slam it shut unknowingly, it didn't change the result. Ultimately, the door slam looked and sounded no different on the receiving end for Kip, and jarred him all the same.

Leaving the past behind and walking away was easiest, but now that Jon had opened the door, Kip felt that he had to at least think about it, rather than letting it slam again.

"Moving on was best," assured Tom, "you didn't know you'd see Jon again, and you still have the choice now without having to let it drive you crazy all that time. At least it seems like you had some good guys with you to help you with that too."

Kip smirked as he came out of his thoughts. He'd had plenty of help after confiding in Paul. Sure, Paul had ribbed him a bit _-'hey, look at it this way; you still had a chance to make out with Jon!'_ -for the experience, but he'd saved most of his joking for Jon, and tried to distract Kip altogether from it. Alice had sworn he'd never seen Kip and Paul get up to as much trouble as they did the week after his talk with Kip. And Reb had allowed Kip to let out a minimal detail rant on the phone at the end of that week, just to shake his remaining frustration loose.

"I told Reb on a call to him from the road. He got all pissy for a couple of weeks -you'd think it upset him more than me. Made some digs at Jon that he wouldn't usually make for the fun of it -that was probably the first time I heard Reb say that many bad things about someone at once without saying something nice to take the edge off it. I could have done the same as him, I guess, to cut loose on it. But it still wouldn't have changed anything."

Tom chuckled dryly. "Hey. Don't piss off the protective bandmate. You think they're too innocent and too nervous -wouldn't even hurt a fly. You say something wrong to them and they don't know what to do with it and freeze up. But you hurt someone they love and they'll spend all day having a go at something that's ten times bigger than them if it's the last thing they ever do. Jeff's our guy like that. Jon's lucky he hasn't gotten more grief from Jeff over Rick -and I'd bet you noticed in Florida, 'cause Eric and I thought we were gonna have to sit on him that morning!"

Kip guffawed as he thought back to Jeff's responses to Rick's story that morning.

"Yeah, Reb will go quiet and stay bitter about things that happen to him, but he won't go after whoever did it. But if it happens to anyone else, he'll tell you straight up what he thinks about them for it -no dancing around it. If you ask me on this, I don't know. I wouldn't _think_ I'm bitter -I haven't done the kind of thing I think I would if I was. I'm not gonna try to ruminate on it when I only spent one night of my life with him -I had how many other people to think about who were with me and sticking around in my life then. Aside from that first week after coming to terms, I can't tell you the last time I thought about Jon until we met up here, Tom. And I still didn't give that night much thought until he approached me either."

"And if we weren't all alongside each other right now, you probably still wouldn't be thinking about it either, but you can't expect yourself to not think about something that's been put right under your nose," Tom rationalized. "You're not the only one who'd be losing some sleep over it, Kip."

"You're right about that." Kip sighed. "I just don't know why I'm almost more embarrassed because I'm feeling that way now -when I know it's normal -or normal for being in this, because this isn't-?" He trailed off with a sullen look. _It's a good thing I'm better at singing on no sleep than I am at talking, because I can't talk for shit right now..._

Tom raised an eyebrow, then propped his head up on his hand and leaned sideways in thought.

"If I really think on it, and especially the first time I sat down to talk with him, maybe I am bitter."

"You know..." Tom held his hands up. "This is just a thought -I'm not assuming anything here about you -but I've heard it said that if you have to ask yourself if you're bitter about something-"

"-then you probably are," Kip finished with a sigh. "Yeah, I've heard that, so I guess if I set the pride aside and get out of denial, I am. You know, Alice would get a kick out of knowing you spared him a call; he'd tell me the exact same thing."

Tom grinned bashfully. "He's very welcome."

"It's funny, because I don't want to be bitter -it's not gonna fix what happened -but somehow I do at the same time."

"You just don't want to have a grudge in your head that's going to dictate your life, or whatever you're gonna do with Jon," Tom corrected. "There's a difference between being upset over something you have a good reason to be upset about and holding onto something so tight that it's controlling you. Maybe it wasn't about love and he's fine now, but did you think Rick wasn't ever a little bitter over what happened to him?"

"I got the sense he was at a point." Kip remembered Rick's sarcastic joking about Jon being 'tied up' with other things. "He just laughs it off now, which I guess that's how I was until this opened back up. I'll have an easier time getting there when I get some sleep."

"I think you guys have soundcheck in ten minutes or so," warned Tom. "I'd better let you go so you can get that done and take your nap before you have to go onstage. Not opposed to sneaking another today myself."

Kip smiled tiredly and stood up. "Yeah, Reb might just chase me down and make me lie down if I don't on my own."

"It's up to you what happens with Jon. Just don't feel like you have to apologize for not being able to act like it never happened -or for wanting to take it slow. How he deals with that might tell you more than anything else. Personally, I hope you guys can figure it out -because knowing he's trying with you now and getting as guilt sick as he was, I think he really does care -but if you feel like it needs to end, it's in your right. And if you need anyone to listen during this tour," Tom motioned beside himself, "I'm here. Our door's open and we'll have a seat for you. Two actually -one for you to sit in, and one to throw at Jon if he's giving you a hard time."

This time, Kip laughed and had to swallow hard as some of the invisible weight lifted off him.

"Thanks, Tom. A lot."

Tom nodded before gathering up the chairs and slipping back inside his tent, leaving Kip to return to his own.

_I still love him,_ Kip decided. He'd denied feeling bitter long enough, and there was no point in denying love either when enough time had passed from his first talk with Jon to know. He did know one thing about himself -he wouldn't be wasting his time still worrying about it this far along if he didn't still have feelings for him.

_I just don't know how I'm supposed to go about loving him anymore._

He'd been lying awake, unsure whether to fully cross the threshold of the open door he and Jon were now nervously stepping in and out of, or if he wanted to face another difficult talk with Jon to get it over with and close it gently to stop the risk of another end with a slam.

Kip did know one thing for certain -that in all the mess that had materialized around him, he had a friend in Tom Keifer. One he'd already had for awhile. And with Tom knowing Jon in the more recent time, having a much better perspective on him, if there was anyone who had the most viable advice to give about Jon, it was Tom.

And with his talk with Tom, he'd processed a few things. Jon had already opened the slammed back door with his re-entrance backstage. Though intrusive then, he'd admitted his wrong, played fair since, and he'd left Kip holding the door and the power to decide what happened next. He'd eagerly asked and listened for everything he'd missed. He'd made a point of making himself accessible, and if it wasn't a sign that love was still hanging in the threshold, then Kip had to admit, Jon was putting on a pretty strong act.

And while it was still possible to leave the past behind and close the door if it came to it, Kip would not let the past pull him down to the level of slamming Jon back out just as fast.

............

Sound check -as usual with backstage tent setups and the chances of things ending up anywhere but where they should have been far higher -was a mess. It ended up being particularly frustrating for Paul and Kip; Paul's guitar and Kip's microphone were fine, but getting the keyboard and bass right was determined to be a painful process. 

There were still a good two hour period before they'd have to start getting ready if they were going slow. Kip tried not to be annoyed as he retreated to a quiet section in the tent behind a room divider he and Reb had already designated for napping. Being excessively tired had nothing to do with the equipment misbehaving so much, as much as it felt it sometimes stacked up that way.

Having managed to get his setup in working order sooner, Reb was already half-asleep on one side of the mat with the pillows and blanket he'd taken from the bus, giving off small whimpers and twitches in his light sleep that he always made when he was stressed.

Lowering himself down to the floor softly beside him and taking a free pillow, Kip reached over and sank his fingers -which trembled lightly with fatigue -through Reb's curls to stroke the back of his neck.

"Hey," he murmured, "relax."

He couldn't help but feel like a hypocrite, telling Reb to relax when he hardly could.

"Y'okay?" Reb mumbled out sleepily. "Didn't d'n'thin, right?"

"My setup is good to go now. And no, nothing bad happened with it, or anybody. Not sure what's gonna happen... I dunno, it'll be alright." Kip paused to yawn as Reb's contagiously exhausted voice played havoc on him. "I'll figure it out. You don't need to worry 'bout it. Don't drive yourself crazy."

The very second Kip's head hit the pillow, a buzzing filled his ears and he felt the room spin -feeling just how fast the world really was moving as he did before he crashed out from exhaustion. His eyelids felt as though they had turned to lead, and closing them felt good, but he struggled to find a position on the floor that was comfortable for the rest of his body. With a sigh, he gave up sprawled on his stomach and waited desperately for reality to finish spinning out and give him a rest for the short time he had.

It hadn't even been a minute when his knee gave a sudden twinge, warning him very emphatically that it did not want to be extended fully and pressing down on the floor today. Kip rolled over on his side so that he could pull it in at a more relaxed angle and accepted that his shoulder in contact with the floor was going to be stiff when he woke up from bearing his weight. He was far too tired to care otherwise any longer, even if it meant discomfort while holding his bass onstage.

Suddenly, an arm hooked itself under him and wrapped around his front. A hand squeezed his upward-facing shoulder, and the grip was just right to be comforting, but loose enough to not feel like he was being restrained.

Kip startled at first. He almost told Reb not to worry about him and go back to sleep. Not to worry himself either. He had dealt with far worse physical pains in his lifetime. This was nothing.

But Reb didn't feel tensed up with worry -quite the opposite. The uncomfortable pressure on his downward facing shoulder had been relieved, and the physical comfort was something Kip didn't have it in him to reject today. After sitting last night out alone, it was feeling pretty good to be held and told everything would be alright rather than the other way around.

With that, Kip wondered if maybe it was just time to let Reb look out for him and not worry about stressing him out for once. Maybe Tom was right about that too, that as long as he didn't go overboard with it, it was okay to not tiptoe around how drained the last week had left him.

With a soft whimper he hadn't really intended to make that spoke loudly of his discomfort, Kip rolled over on his other side and curled in against Reb, resting his cheek on his shoulder.

Kip waited for Reb to panic and start asking questions as to what happened or if he needed anything. He waited for Reb to begin going overboard, trying to make it better.

Instead, Reb seemed to slip into some alternate state of calm. He lay still and quiet with his arms around him, his breathing was slow -only one step above being fully asleep -and he was simply there, allowing Kip to hold on and be held if he wanted to, but not preventing him from backing off if he wanted to move away. He lay there aware, but would not speak about it unless Kip made the move to say he wanted to. 

It seemed that this was how he'd chosen to try making it better, and as long as Kip could relax to get some sleep, he was distracted from his own pre-show nerves and relaxed too. And Kip understood it then. Reb wasn't going to go overboard. There were times he would go overboard when he panicked from not knowing what to do. Right now, Reb did know. He _was_ already trying to make it better -and he wouldn't even need a nap for himself to be calm enough to go onstage if he could succeed in making it better for Kip.

And Reb was the only one of his bandmates who had ever slammed a door in his face.

_Guess it's hard to make a call from the first door slam,_ he thought to himself as the remaining light faded. That was the last thing Kip knew until he woke to Rod's warning hours later, with Reb asleep next to him, still supporting him in his outstretched arms.


	11. 9. Only Need One Answer to Get Me Through the Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Kip take a night outside in the mountains of North Carolina to talk for the first time since leaving Georgia.

Following the show in Columbia, Rod and Reb made the call on rooming arrangements. Being eager to go to sleep as soon as they were settled in the hotel, Rod took Kip with him.

The show had been easier to get through than Kip had feared in the morning. His backstage nap combined with the energy surge of getting onstage had him pumped up enough that he felt fine at the end of the show. Even more energetic than he did on the average night. By the time Cinderella were onstage and Winger were in their dressing room, Kip felt that there might have even been a chance to attempt talking to Jon at the end of the night -if for nothing else than to arrange a time to meet again.

But by the time the backstage routine was halfway through and Bon Jovi had taken the stage, he'd come back to more realistic expectations, which only became more real as the night went on. The three-hour post-show period at the venue before heading for the hotel left him delirious and trembling with exhaustion, verging on illness by one more sleepless night.

"Complicated," Kip murmured in response to Rod's visible, yet wordless concern as he dropped onto the bed after pulling his street clothes off, not bothering to make a full sentence out of it. There was no secret as to what was complicated.

"I'm sure it is. But I'm not making you tell me anything." Rod put the back of his hand on Kip's forehead. "I _am_ gonna tell you you need to sleep, whether you realize it or not. I'll call Alice and have him tell you if you don't."

Kip started laughing hard at that. It was funny to him, but not funny enough to call for laughter -that was from lack of sleep -and while it was a little embarrassing, he couldn't keep from doing it. He knew that if he tried to force himself to stop, it would only make it worse, so he wittily played along while waiting to settle down instead.

"Do it," he told Rod, who was watching with a smile that was amused and sad at the same time. "Call him; it would be funny. I want to hear his reaction."

Rod sighed.

"No, we're gonna let him deal with whoever he has with him tonight. I know you got stuff to deal with, but you can take care of that tomorrow. You gotta go to sleep, _right now_. Don't make me make it an order."

His scolding was just enough distraction along with the exertion of the gut-busting laugh for Kip to crash out after seventy-two near-sleepless hours.

Rod climbed into the other bed and went to sleep just hoping that whatever was happening didn't end in heartbreak at the end of the tour.

Kip slept through the whole night, and Rod let him sleep in as late as possible to allow him enough time to pack for the bus ride up to Charlotte -one that was relatively short, but expected to have heavy traffic toward the end.

He had a feeling he'd regret it if he set himself up for another struggle later, but taking advantage of not being fully awake by the time he was packed and checked out of the hotel, Kip retreated to his bunk to sleep on the ride up too.

Inevitably -while feeling much better -Kip found himself still wide awake hours after the show on arrival to the hotel, which was a good hour and a half away from the venue. According to the tour managers, with Charlotte being the big city it was, it was already at higher capacities than others before accounting for people traveling to the concerts and staying in town, and trying to get all the bands and crew in one place would have required paying through the nose.

They'd ended up in Mill Spring -a small, open town. Not quite into the Appalachian mountains, but close enough that the land had steep hills and winding, twisting roads to boast, and the true mountain peaks were visible in the distant background of the night sky. It was far enough from the city light pollution that stars speckled the entirety of the dark background above the mountains. Something Kip felt he didn't see often enough since his move to New York, even with the nights on tour stopping in the more rural towns such as this one.

After dropping his overnight bag off in his room with Reb, Kip went back outside to enjoy the view.

He had been outside for awhile -not too long -when the third and final bus pulled in for the night, arriving to the hotel after the show later than the rest as usual. It was such a normal occurrence from the perspective of anyone in a non-headlining band that Kip didn't think twice of it -until a short time after the commotion of unloading and heading inside had died down, and he heard footsteps in the thick grass of the hillside out behind the building.

"Hey." He turned around to face Jon, who was still carrying himself in his larger-than-life showman stride, but more subdued and down-to-Earth with enough time passed since leaving the venue.

"I noticed you were out here when we came around the bend, and it's been a couple of days. I thought I'd come out and see how you were. I don't think I've ever seen you stand so still before," noted Jon with the faintest hint of a smile in his voice. He paused, before adding, "you can tell me to go away and leave you alone tonight if you want. Some of my guys overdid it tonight, and I think Eric and Jeff did too; I can go help Tom take care of them."

"No, you can stay out here," Kip decided. "I might not have much to say, but you're fine."

"Are you good?" asked Jon, taking a few steps closer. "Why are you out here standing around at 3:00 in the morning?"

"Look up," said Kip, without looking away from the mountain horizon.

"What do you mean?"

"Just look _up._ You'll see what I mean."

Jon did. At first, he saw the mountains, which he couldn't understand how they might be a spectacle to Kip. At least not in the middle of the night. The mountains were plenty visible in the daytime too, and while Kip had grown up in the mountains, he didn't strike Jon as the nostalgic type who would sit outside at night staring at their outline in the dark for the sake of it.

Then, he looked a little higher.

"Stars?" Jon did a double take, noticing just how many were filling the dark sky, and unlike the mountains and the time of night, they did make sense. "I guess I've never really noticed them like that. There's a lot more than I've ever seen."

"You don't see them like that in New York City. Or in most parts of Jersey for that matter," said Kip. "You probably haven't ever seen them like this."

"People don't talk about them so much around home either. I guess there's not much use in it when you don't ever see them, and I probably don't really think to look for them on the road." Suddenly, Jon pointed. "Is that Little Dipper out there?"

Kip turned where he was looking in another direction to follow Jon's finger up.

"It is."

Jon couldn't quite keep the smile from tugging his mouth up, and the concern of embarrassing himself with something new seemed to slip into the back of his mind.

"I've never found a constellation before," he admitted.

"Well, at least you didn't automatically assume you had Big Dipper there -some people do on their first try."

"It looked too small for how I imagined that would be," said Jon, looking a little bit prideful.

Kip smirked and shook his head. "There are more reliable ways to tell that too."

"Did you often look for them before you came to the city?"

"I remember a few from back home. Not too many -I kind of lost it after I moved, but I'm getting it back. It helps when we have a run of nights through the Midwest, or in the mountains."

"So that's something else you do." Jon side-eyed Kip in the cover of the darkness.

"Something I enjoy, but not in the way I'd really like to _yet_ ," Kip corrected. "For obvious reasons -time and city life. But once I get all the old stuff down again, I want to take it further when I get some downtime off the road. Read up on it, see different insights and decide what I think about it all, look further than what I can see with my own two eyes..."

"I'll just give you a few more years and you'll probably be an expert," said Jon. His tone was mildly joking, but his face said he was serious all at the same time.

Kip felt amused at the thought that Jon was definitely no longer tiptoeing around him to be making _that_ kind of a joke -which wasn't upsetting, but rather a relief with the loss of awkward tension, and that he was seeing Jon acting like his real self.

"It's possible, though I'd prefer you wouldn't go silent for another three years without at least warning me if it had to be that way. I'll have a lot of answers to things in a few years, but then I'll probably have other things to figure out too."

A strong gust of wind blew down from the mountains, nearly offsetting Jon's balance. He took an unplanned, but deliberate step toward Kip to keep from embarrassing himself by stumbling with the wind, and deciding he felt comfortable with the motion, took one more step, leaving them close, with just enough space between them to keep from pushing it too fast.

_It's definitely going to be storming tomorrow,_ he noted by how the wind felt warm and humid compared to the cool, dry night air they were standing in.

"Can you tell me how to find the constellations you _can_ see?" he asked.

"I'll help you find some well-known ones," said Kip. "If I try to find everything I can see and remember all the ones I know -start obsessing on it -we'll be out here awhile. You found Little Dipper. Most nights it's easier to work this the opposite way around, but tonight's an exception, so look back to it."

"There it is," said Jon, pointing as he found it again.

"And if you look, you notice how the scoop is opening toward the right, and the handle is pointing up?"

"Yeah, the spoon portion has its back pointing left."

"Go straight out from the tip of the handle-"

"-The North Star," said Jon confidently.

"Yes -or 'Polaris' -and if you go out to the right, and maybe a little bit down, like you're drawing a line, and then look around." Kip looked on his own while Jon extended his finger as a guide and began searching. "You have to do it a few times to get a feel for how far to go. The lights are blocking some of it, so it's not ideal-"

"I see something that looks like it could be Big Dipper, but I can't see most of the handle."

"That's it," said Kip, nodding. "It's hanging lower, and the lights are obscuring the stars in the handle. Depending on where you are, you might not be able to see the entirety of one, and that can make it tricky to tell what you're looking at if there isn't a distinctive segment. It also makes it tricky if you aren't used to looking for them how they'll be turned around in different directions depending on when you do it."

"How do you find Orion?" asked Jon. "I don't know a lot of names, but I've heard that one a lot."

"Alright, if you see the whole thing, it looks like a hunter with a bow and arrow. There's no way we'll see it all with lights on behind us, but you see those three stars right out there? Right in line with each other and close together?"

Jon followed Kip's finger -his extended arm was less than a foot from him, practically resting over his shoulder -and saw the three lined up stars.

"That's the belt," he said, hoping he'd guessed correctly and wasn't sounding stupid.

"Yeah, that's it. That's the easiest part to find -one of the brighter parts too. Actually, if you're outside the city lights in a typical neighborhood, that's one you still have a fair shot at finding."

"I don't get how some people can just look up and find them without thinking." Jon shook his head.

"It takes awhile to get it down, and again, it helps if you've spent time living at some point in your life where you can regularly see them. I had a pretty good view in Colorado."

"Any others you think are easy to find?"

"Andromeda should sound familiar, but unless you know what it looks like, it's not an easy shape to describe," said Kip. "It would be easier if I was to draw it. I haven't been able to find it myself since leaving home, and it's not as common, but you could easily figure out Vela if you see it. It's a sail -kind of looks like a misshapen diamond. And Crux -that's four stars arranged like a cross."

"Okay, okay," Jon ceded, holding his hands up. "Once you get out to that point, you might as well be speaking in Greek to me -and I know enough to realize that with some of the names, you actually would be."

Kip just backed off with a knowing grin.

"Really, it's shame we're not out West -if the timing was right, these would be the right conditions where you might catch the Northern lights."

"That's something else I know I won't see in Jersey," Jon said matter-of-factly. "If I did have time between the touring and recording."

"So then what would you do if you _did?_ " said Kip with a hint of challenge in his voice. "Because I'm not believing you saying you don't have anything else that's interesting."

Jon noticed in the faint cast of light over the dark that his eyebrows were lowered in the same sort of seductive way they had been when he was in stage horror costume years back, but not quite geared that way, or as sinister. He was just teasing, because he _did_ know better.

"Come to think about it, I thought skiing was fun when I was younger, when I look back. I had fun with it as a kid. I thought I was pretty good at it too. And I probably was for someone my age," he said pridefully, before breaking off with a sheepish grin. "Then I attempted to try an expert slope on my own and got in a fight with a tree two minutes into down the hill. Judging by where you grew up, I bet you already know that when you get in a fight with a tree, even if it doesn't lay you out entirely, there's no way you're gonna win in full. And that's not funny either."

Kip smiled hard in the dark.

"You just admitted to crashing into a tree; yeah, it is. Did it steal the poles from you too?" A hint of laughter tinged his monotone.

"No, I got them untangled pretty quick -that's what I mean by it won, but I didn't lose in every way. It gave me some good scrapes -really to my pride more than anything else, but I wasn't gonna let it get away with that. And while I enjoyed it, I don't really see myself making that a regular thing."

"Or you don't want to lose to _another_ tree?"

Jon snorted. "God damn it, Kip. I'm gonna regret telling you now." He couldn't see Kip holding back laughter, but he could tell that he was.

"I have thought of doing more traveling by motorcycle. But that's something I already want to do. Probably not a surprise; they're pretty popular in Jersey. I really don't think on what I aspire to do; I spend more time living in the moment and just enjoying what I have. Sure it gets old on the road, but that could end, and I want to enjoy it while it's here."

"I've figured that," Kip quipped. It was so easy for him to tell now that he'd had multiple encounters with Jon, just how much the environment around him could dictate how he acted in it. It consumed him. He was completely different onstage from how he was backstage, and that varied depending on who was there. It made sense with Tom's descriptions. Now he was finally seeing Jon as himself -not taken by the tension between them or trying to be seductive, still prideful in himself without pushing to showboat over it, and just hanging out and being friendly. 

"Sometimes getting caught up in the moment makes it go by faster even when it does get a little too monotonous on the road. At least it does for me, because I forget about how long it's been that way. Of course, I really should get better about that, since I've fucked a lot of stuff up doing that and forgetting everything else," Jon admitted. "Including how I fucked up with you."

The warm storm breeze stopped abruptly, and the carefree, calm feeling dropped away.

"Okay, stop that." Kip held his hands up in the dark. "We already talked about that. I'm not happy about what happened. Honestly, I never will be. But I'm done with it, and it's not something I want to hang onto from the past and have take over where we are now. Maybe looking ahead for the sake of carrying this on is a good thing -if we decide for it to happen -but we still have two weeks together and time before we have to do that, and I think we should make them good."

"So if there's any time to live in the moment, now's it," Jon finished, smiling in the dark as the breeze picked up again. They _were_ getting somewhere.

"And right now we're out here at heaven be damned o'clock in the morning talking, and we're probably going to be tired tomorrow, but if we want to stay out longer and talk -or keep looking for stuff in the sky -then that's it."

They stood there for a couple of quiet minutes with a mere two feet separating them, before Jon finally spoke.

"You know what, Kip?"

"What?"

"I think I got something. It's not something I think I'd want to actually do for now -maybe that'll change. But I'll admit that with all I've seen that goes into producing just a short music video, I wouldn't mind studying what goes into acting. I have a lot of respect for what it must take to do a full-length film and multiple sets."

Kip raised his eyebrows, but didn't turn his head. He was still listening.

"...I probably oughta keep quiet about that though," Jon continued after a long pause. "Some fans might not take too well to that image. They already get the idea that I'm a poser."

Kip snorted.

"I do ballet, Jon. People have had _plenty_ to say about that and it won't stop me. What are they gonna do; make me stop? I questioned it the first time I caught grief, but then what do they know?"

"They don't," said Jon. "There are guys who will run their mouths to look tough, but if they knew more before saying something, they might not say it. 'Cause if they knew more before saying something, they might not be saying the same thing. Watch enough music videos with acted scenes, and some guys out there really can't do it when they don't have to remember any lines and get into character. Our first music videos were rough."

Kip groaned. "Yours weren't even bad considering some of the ones out there, and some of that you can tell was the director's idea that the bands just followed along with. If anyone can manage to get some of the crazy prompts the producers throw out there to turn out good, they deserve an acting award just for that."

Jon couldn't help but laugh out into the night at Kip's sudden snideness. 

"I'd be half-ready to act if I did try it. Lord knows. Or I could get into my interest in cars and take that further. You know what the best part of that is? You can be like the kid taking the radio apart to see how it works for fun, except it's not seen as playing around in the same way -and you don't get into trouble for it."

"Act like a troublemaker and not get in trouble." With the sky beginning to obstruct with distant storm clouds rolling in over the mountains, Kip turned and began slowly walking back toward the hotel. "I could get behind that in my own ways."

"No, I'm a troublemaker, and proud of it." Jon crossed his arms over his chest in an exaggerated motion before beginning to follow Kip back around to the front of the building.

"I can see that too, because you already were -and it takes one to know one, don't you know?" Kip flashed a hint of his sinister grin, and this time, Jon could see it in the lights outside the front door.

"That's gotta be something."

"What is?" asked Kip, whispering as they made their way inside and down the hallway of rooms.

"If we do alright here for two weeks, I have to be better at remembering to call so we can one-up each other on how much trouble we manage to get up to."

"You got some stiff competition," quipped Kip as he stopped outside his door. "But I think you might have a chance."

Jon continued down the hall pondering just what Kip might have implied by that as silence took over the night again.


	12. 10. Take My Hand, We'll Make it I Swear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trip across North Carolina to Fayetteville has a lot of twists and turns, and it ends up turning into a white-knuckle experience for a few of the guys. But maybe the less than ideal conditions have something good in them for Kip and Jon with the right ideas to make it through them.

Following the late night in Mill Spring, the caravan of buses took off following each other on an Eastbound cross-state haul through North Carolina to Fayetteville. Even if not for their hotel being in the opposite direction from Charlotte, the gap between the locations was inconveniently placed where there was no stretch of interstate or US highway to pick up which did not involve making a large loop North, or nearly all the way down to the South Carolina border. 

One interstate route was unfeasible with the time laid out on the itinerary, and the other was pushing it, but management had outlined a path by the major state routes that was more direct and cut the trip time down by nearly two hours. Some of the roads were single lanes, but noted as safe by the department of transportation for buses to take as long as they didn't have trailers attached, which they did not. They would spend most of their time between Charlotte and Fayetteville on North Carolina State Road 24, and State Road 211, after returning from Mill Spring to Charlotte by State Road 9 and US Route 74.

In all expectation, taking most of the ride on the back roads with only a few looks into towns at the intersections with larger highways seemed unlikely to provide much excitement.

For better or worse, it would have likely been uneventful -if not for an encounter after just the first ten minutes on the road with a pickup truck jacked up on wheels disproportionately large to the vehicle, nonfunctional mufflers, and a driver who had an aggressive need for speed and no patience for being behind a line of buses.

The truck driver's decision to pass the buses on State Road 9 would have been welcomed with the situation of one lane in each direction, if not for it being done on a curved, blind stretch around rocky hills where the double yellow line was solid to warn that doing so wasn't wise on that particular stretch.

When another car happened to be coming up on the other side around the curve, with nowhere else to go, the truck forced its way between the Bon Jovi bus and the Cinderella bus behind it.

The latter buses had to slam on the brakes hard to keep from plowing over the truck, and while Kip would later have to ask what exactly had happened to know what he and his bandmates hadn't been able to see from the back lounge, he was able to figure out that someone had cut the line of buses off by the sudden lurch -which was amplified by being at the back of the vehicle, and at the end of the chain reaction. 

The reaction their driver had to it gave him plenty of information too.

"GO to _HELL!"_ he roared from the front after the cacophony of horns silenced. "Before you get somebody ELSE killed!"

Their driver on this stretch of the tour didn't have the _worst_ temper Kip had seen, but he had a short straw when it came to obnoxious drivers. In this instance, Kip could feel for him losing his patience. He just wished his reaction hadn't been quite as jarring as screaming and laying on the horn for five seconds straight, giving them all a shock of adrenaline first thing in the morning.

Reb sat up from where he'd been thrown sideways on the couch next to Kip and huffed out a very heavy, shaking sigh. He doubled over his lap and held his head while trying to regain his bearings.

"That was _not cool at all,"_ Rod complained, enunciating each syllable heavily as he untangled himself from Paul on the fold-out couch across the walkway.

"Aw, man." Kip shook his head in agreement. "That'll wake you up bright 'n early if you weren't awake already. Reb, are you okay?"

"I'll know in an hour or so," he moaned, already feeling wonky as the adrenaline high began crashing down inside him. It hadn't taken long from the time Kip met Reb to learn that one significantly large scare or upset early enough in the day could leave him jumpy and on edge for hours -feeling apprehensive and frightened by things that he might not give much thought otherwise.

Paul drew in a wheezing gasp of air and went into a coughing jag as he clutched the side of his stomach where Rod's elbow had impacted, digging in and knocking the wind out of him.

Rod cringed. "Of course, Paul just got it in the gut from me real good -not on purpose. Sorry, I know that hurt."

"Ugh, someone get help! Rod's tryin' to kill me!" Groaning, Paul got up to walk it off and get a drink of water to recuperate.

"Whatever driver did that better get help if I ever meet them in person, because I'll have plenty to say to them," Reb threatened.

"Reb, don't wind yourself up any more," Kip warned as Paul appeared in the doorway with a cup of water, half of which he tossed back in one go before coming through the doorway.

"Don't drink that too fast this soon after waking up," warned Rod. "Especially winding around on these roads. You might be fine with one of those things alone, but if you get enough happening at once to push you over the edge, you're not gonna feel too good."

"I don't know, Rod, should I take your word after getting impaled?" Paul's grin assured he was joking, right before he took another big swig just to test Rod's nerves and ducked back out of the lounge before anyone could think to retaliate -be it Rod with words, or Kip with another slam in the arm.

Rod sighed and gave Paul a weary grin noting surrender regardless of who was right, and turned to Reb.

"Reb, come over here and lie down so you can try to relax. I know with you it's probably not gonna do much good if it's already done, but it can't hurt to try."

Reb stood up and crossed the aisle, keeping a death grip with one hand to the couch he stood up from until he reached his other out to touch the extended, folded out portion of the other. Then he sank down next to Rod.

Kip turned around on the couch and tried to get as good a look he could get out the side window of the roadside for any breaks in the trees giving way to interesting views over the hills, hoping for a better source of excitement than reckless drivers -if any at all -for the rest of the ride.

At the front of the bus line, unaffected by the cutoff but having heard the evidence of it, Jon made his way to the front of the bus and the driver's compartment to investigate.

"What just happened back there? Are they okay?" he asked.

The pickup's horn blasted behind the bus as they slowed down to take a bend.

The driver groaned. "You gotta be kidding me. I understand wanting to get around a bus, but you are _really_ something special... I think 'horn-trigger-happy-need-for-speed' behind us cut 'em off trying to pass, because on that last curve, I saw someone coming up the other side right before all that racket started."

Before Jon could react to the driver's conjecture, an engine growled tremendously, and suddenly, the pickup truck rushed up the opposing lane beside the bus. It swung back into the lane in front of them with hardly enough space to keep from brake-checking them, then hit the pedal to go wailing down the road and screaming out of sight around another corner, practically drifting around it.

Jon raised his eyebrows. "So it seems. Damn, that's a bit excessive. And that's coming from me when this band practically owns excessive on the road."

"Yeah, you get _way_ ahead of us, and you stay away," muttered the driver darkly to the truck never to be seen again. "Only way I wanna see you again is pulled over on the side with the state trooper."

"Where are the troopers when you need 'em anyway?" asked Richie, poking his head in from where he'd been eavesdropping for an answer too. He'd heard and seen the truck -or really, a metallic streak that was the truck -pass through the side window. "They're happy to pull you over in the city for going five over, but they're nowhere when someone's doing something really dangerous."

"As long as no one's hurt, he's gone, and I don't wanna worry about that any longer. Hey, speaking of that, can I radio Tom?" Jon cast a concerned look at the radio phone. "I know they've been looking to change buses in Pennsylvania because of suspension problems and rough riding -that hard stop could have been painful."

The driver sighed, but unhooked the shield-shaped hand speaker piece and stretched the cord over to the front passenger seat, then reached up on the side panel over the left window and connected him to bus behind them.

"Make it quick; we're at the front and I'm the one who has to check in to the state road registry for us at certain mile markers."

Not wasting time with a thanks that was easily left unspoken, Jon pushed the button to talk down and requested Tom from Cinderella's driver. There was a delay, but soon, the line crackled as the talk button was held down to connect the other line, and Jon heard the sound of breathless laughter and Tom saying something inaudible to the driver before finally addressing him.

"I was walking through the bus when we braked, and I fell on my ass!" Tom snickered. "Not on the tailbone -that coulda really hurt. What's going on?"

"That probably still is going to hurt tomorrow." Jon started to ask if everyone was okay, but he could hear shouting in the background.

"What, Rick? You said-? -Hold on," warned Tom. Jon heard a muffled calling away from the phone of 'Fred, is there ice in the cooler? ...Get yourself a bag from the cabinet and put some in it -no, Jeff, you stay there and sit tight...'

_What on Earth do they have going on over there?_ Jon groaned internally at himself when he found himself looking over his shoulder reflexively, even though there was no way to see through his own bus to the bus behind theirs, or the one following it for that matter.

"Alright, sorry, Jon. What was that you asked?"

"It sounds like you're having 'Hell on Wheels' go from song straight into reality. Are you guys okay?"

"Uhhhhhh..." Tom trailed off with an uneasy laugh in his voice. "Not a bad way of putting it, and now _that's_ a _question._ I'd say we're having a little situation over here. Eric and Jeff went too hard last night; that hard stop didn't do their hangovers any favors, and Jeff getting thrown out of his bunk didn't help his anxiety any either."

"God, you guys got thrown harder than it sounded." Jon's heart sank for Jeff, knowing how terrified he must have been to have his seemingly ridiculous and paranoid fear become real. "Is anyone hurt?"

"No, no -nothing -well, maybe a little, but we'll be okay. We checked to make sure Jeff's not hurt -he's just freaking out and we're trying to get him calmed down before it gets any worse, and Fred fell into the doorway and hit his shoulder, so I'm having him ice it to make sure it doesn't turn into a problem tonight. I'm not sure about Eric; Rick's got him and Jeff. A couple of bumps, but nothing serious is what it's looking like."

"Do you guys need anything?" asked Jon, shuddering as the screeching brakes and horns echoed in his head and all the ways it could have been so much worse began swarming his mind. "I'm serious, we can see about pulling over next opportunity if you do-"

"I don't know if we do. It's kind of hard to tell since we're only just picking ourselves up. I at least think it'll be fine once we get situated again, but I'm not gonna be overly sure until it happens -we're just gonna hang tight awhile and see how we're doing. Besides that, I think if we make a bigger fuss than we need to just yet, it'll rile Jeff up." Tom sighed. "We'll figure it out."

"Are you good if I call in an hour to check on you guys?"

"Hey, do ya even have to ask?" Tom joked. "Anything to make a ride interesting that doesn't involve near-misses with other vehicles is fine by me."

"Alright, Tom, you go take it easy and recuperate from that," said Jon. "No more falling down in the aisle!"

Tom laughed before disconnecting.

"Can I check in with the other bus too?" asked Jon. He quickly backed down and accepted the answer as 'no' when the driver gave him the stink-eye, flipped the channel, and spoke some commercial driver-code to some law enforcement department responsible for the state roads. He knew why he couldn't be on the radio phone for something other than it's main purpose any longer than necessary, though he was increasingly anxious to know if Kip and his band mates were okay after hearing the predicament Tom was left with.

Maybe he could check on Kip after he checked back with Tom, or maybe if he waited until the midway point, the driver wouldn't be too bugged with the frequency of calls. Though once half-an-hour was likely pushing it too. Now that Tom was expecting him to check back, he didn't want to lose his privilege beforehand. While this case was entirely different, Jon felt that he'd just gotten himself back in Kip's good graces after not following through on the phone, and he wasn't about to fall out of Tom's immediately after.

"Now that the jerk is gone, it should be a clear ride from here if we don't meet anyone else like him," said the driver after hanging up -the very moment before a line of lightening ran up the grey sky between the trees ahead, splitting off into the pattern of shattering the dark clouds like glass. A crack of thunder vibrated the ground beneath the bus's tires and reverberated through the frame a few seconds later, just as they made the turn back onto US Route 74, heading back to Charlotte. The road widened, giving them a brief respite from the narrow bends.

"Yeah, I hope so," Jon murmured, somehow having the feeling that their encounter with the pickup truck was only the beginning of a very interesting ride.

An hour later, just after getting back on the Eastern side of Charlotte again and picking up State Road 24, the buses were driving through a torrential downpour so heavy that it was difficult to see even with the wipers on full. Between coming down in altitude and going into the storm, the line of buses had traveled through a steep change in atmospheric pressure, and with that in addition to the roadway's continuing twists and turns, some of the guys were feeling it strongly.

Reb was the first one to feel it on the bus at the end of the line, and there was no doubt left that he was still feeling the aftereffects of the adrenaline shock induced by the truck incident, as each time the bus braked slightly faster than usual to deal with a turn, he flinched. Regardless of whether it was strong enough to shift everyone around in their seats.

However, when Paul began to feel it next, it took him a lot further. A mild tension headache quickly escalated into an intense one, and the pressure in his ears led to progressively increasing vertigo with each turn of the road. He tried to deny he was beginning to feel ill, but there was no doubt by the time he huddled up on the couch, looking small, vulnerable, and being far too quiet for Paul Taylor.

Rod tried to recommend that Paul to sit up front so he could see the horizon in the direction they were going, and possibly get some fresh air from the driver's window, though they all knew that it would be fairly difficult for Paul to focus on any object in the distance through the rain. Thanks to their driver's outburst at getting cut off, Paul also wasn't thrilled with the idea of being anywhere near the front of the bus, and neither Rod, nor Kip and Reb could blame him for it.

"I just don't know how testy he's gonna be, and if me being up there is gonna make it worse. Besides, if I start feeling better, he might get annoyed at just how I am."

Rod teased. "Oh, because you won't be able to restrain yourself from making trouble? Now I see! You may be feeling rough, but I guess you're not feeling _that_ bad!"

Jokes aside, he ordered Paul and Reb to take what they had in the first aid kit for motion sickness as a precaution, deciding that whatever they were feeling was best stopped at pressure in the ears, tension through their heads, and throbbing behind the eyes. The last thing they needed was for it to begin playing on their stomachs, and it was just as well Rod enforced his sentiment when he did. Mere minutes before the medicine kicked in and Paul announced that his symptoms were letting up, he was beginning to look green around the gills.

The antihistamine-driven drowsiness ended up knocking him out soon after, and he retreated to his bunk with everyone holding the hope that he'd sleep until they arrived and not have any more problems.

Unfortunately for Reb, still amped and jittery from adrenaline, he was a full bundle of nerves by the time his dose kicked in, and rather than feeling better, the drowsy, heavy-headed feeling it gave him only made him more nervous. His headache grew worse as he became increasingly wound up over not feeling well.

He'd moved with Rod and Kip to sit in the front lounge, and now they were all gathered in the forward facing seat, leaning sideways to see through to the front of the bus without entering the driver's compartment, in hopes that being oriented in the direction they were moving would help.

The downside to the method was how leaning into the aisle made every other turn feel as though it would pitch them off the edge of the seat, or in Rod's case, across the floor, because he was sitting in the aisle next to Reb so that he had nowhere to fall. 

Reb was so nervous with the motion of the bus around the corners that he was sweating, gripping the edge of the seat, and shivering. They all knew by the window views that the driver was taking the twists smooth and tight and doing a really good job of it, but the size of the bus made it feel awkward anyway with every right turn that left him drifting to the left and further into the aisle.

His reaction was almost enough to make Kip feel nervous and woozy, even though the mountain roads in Colorado he'd grown up with made the steep bends of the Appalachian state road feel like a cakewalk.

"Man, all I know is I'm glad I'm used to these kinds of roads, because this would be really rough if I wasn't," he finally admitted as a left turn nearly knocked him into the aisle to his right.

"I got used to these roads around here playing with the Dregs," Rod agreed. "I think the real problem is we're in a bus instead of a van or car. You take and add a big, awkward vehicle size, and then you also can't get as much airflow all the way through from opening a window."

"That's true. I didn't even think about that part."

"And the storm's not helping either -even if we were in a van, we wouldn't want to open a window now, unless we all wanted to get sprayed."

"Also true." Kip grinned mischievously, trying to boost their spirits. "Well, actually, that might be fun, as long as we didn't let it go on long enough to get in the car interior and do damage."

Rod sighed ruefully. "It's all fun and games..."

"...until you wind up with-"

The bus slowed suddenly down to a crawl to take a banked turn along the hillside, and Reb squeezed Rod's hand so tight that Rod winced. As soon as he managed to get his hand free, he put his arm around Reb and hugged him to his side sympathetically.

"Or it's all fun and games until another turn disrupts the conversation and you can't get your mind off it," sighed Rod.

Reb moaned. "Rod, don't -I'm fine, it's not that-"

Kip sighed and looked Reb square in the eyes.

"Now Reb, we've already had this talk, and more than once. First time wasn't long after we managed to sort our differences and get on friendly terms with each other. Quit telling everyone you're fine when you know you're not. It doesn't do you any favors, and it backfires when we're trying to figure out why you're acting strange -so if there's anything else Rod and I can do aside from getting off this road, you gotta own it and tell us."

"Just hold on," said Rod, studying his road map. "We got about an hour and a half left, and we're getting closer to the coast; the hills are only going to get smaller at this point."

The words went unspoken of how much longer an hour and a half on the road felt in a heavy storm with discomfort.

Meanwhile, Jon was calling Tom again, under the warning from the driver that they needed to cut right to the chase, as storms required more frequent check-ins.

"Any better?"

Tom shook his head. "Worse," he murmured. "A lot worse. Unfortunately. I wish I had better news for you."

"I have an idea," said Jon. "But I'm gonna have to tell you quick, _and if you can pass it on..."_

"...Kip, I got Tom Keifer on the radio for you," called the driver from the front, breaking up the dark-humored attempt Kip and Reb were making to distract themselves. "Sounds pretty flustered. You might want to get up here real quick."

Kip furrowed his brow, raising one eyebrow and lowering the other as he got up and cautiously trotted to the front, making sure he had a handhold in reach at every point just in case another unexpected corner came.

"Whatcha got going on over there, Tom?" he asked, picking up the radio phone. "Everything alright?"

"I got a question for you, but how we're doing over here depends on who you're talking about, since there's not really a straight answer," said Tom wearily. "Fred's having fun like a kid on a rollercoaster. I'm fine. Eric, not so much. He's on the couch feeling rough. I mean, he's okay now, but he got pretty sick and we had to load him up on meds, which I think only half of them got into him by the time any of it kicked in. I don't think it help that he was hungover when we hit the road."

"That's no good -are Rick and Jeff okay?"

"Rick's managing. He's sitting up with the driver and looking outside, so that could be making the difference. Jeff got pitched out of his bunk when we got cut off, and waking up to that freaked him out."

Kip remembered what Jon had said in Savannah about Jeff's anxiety on the bus at night and had to question just what drove some of the smallest, random events of life to be so cruel.

"Oh no. He's not-?"

"No, he didn't get hurt. The most he got was getting the wind knocked out of him, but he's having the worst panic attack he's had in months. I went to check on Rick and ask the driver how much further for him about half an hour ago, and I heard your driver talking on the radio with ours and saying that you guys are kind of in the same boat?"

"Almost," said Kip. _Please, don't let anyone start getting sick over here; that's gonna hurt to perform so soon after..._ "Paul's sleeping on medicine and Reb's a little freaked out too. Why?"

"Well, Jon just called our bus radio to check on us, because he knew what happened back with the truck that cut us off and wanted to see if we needed anything or if there was something he could do to fix it, and he's planning to have us stop at one of the emergency pull-offs on the road. Jeff's gonna go on over to their bus -since it doesn't ride as rough as ours, and he's hoping that getting him away from where it happened for a bit will break him out of the freakout mode-"

"Distraction and escape; it's a good idea for that," Kip agreed.

"Yeah, and since he's doing that for him, he wanted you to know that that offer goes to you guys too; just call him so he knows. I don't know what'll help for what you have happening, but Reb needs to go ride with them, by all means. And Jon and a couple of his guys are going to change buses to make some room." Tom's tone shifted then. "That's another thing. I don't know how you feel about that Kip. If you don't want him riding with you, he'll be here on my bus, no questions asked. We'll have Rick stay up with our driver and there'll be plenty of room for him here. But if you guys were looking for a chance to talk, and I don't know what's going on, nor am I asking... I'm telling you this instead of him because his driver is leading and having to connect the radio to other drivers around the state to make sure the road is open or isn't flooded further down, so we can get on another one soon enough if we have to. But if that's something-"

"You know what?" Kip gazed out the windshield as his thoughts began running. "He can come over here; I'm fine with that as long as he's comfortable and wouldn't rather be on yours. And if you all need some more room with the moving around, we're taking the turns pretty rough, but our suspension is a little less rough. Paul's doing alright in his bunk; he's asleep and I'd rather not wake him up -it's probably best if he stays like that. If Eric's asleep, I'd say leave him alone, but if he's up and he wants to come over and hang out on the couch in our lounge, we can have him over here. Or if it's easier to move Rick over here, he's welcome with us too, and you know that if Paul woke up, at least they'd keep each other in good spirits."

Tom chuckled. "Whenever we get together, they really don't stop, do they? Alright, check with Reb, let Jon know if he's going, and we'll figure out the rest when we get off the road."

"Will do, Tom. Thanks for calling." Kip hung up.

"Decide quickly, because we don't have time for any back and forth. God help us all if you can't decide on that any easier than deciding on food..."

Kip dismissed the driver's impatient tone with a quick nod and got back to Reb and Rod in the front lounge, where they collectively decided that if Reb would switch buses at the pull-off.

"Just getting off the bus for a moment in itself might be just the thing, because we knew this was coming, but now it's been going on awhile, and if you can break the cycle now, you might be feeling better by the time we arrive," Rod suggested.

"Unless if you really don't want to. We're not gonna _make_ you."

"I'm not against going, aside from having to get up and run through the rain," Reb started, "I'll go if I can, and I'm not-"

"Hey!" shouted the driver from the front. "The emergency pull-off's right ahead; we might still be hanging over into the lane, so if you're switching rides, be ready to move as soon as the brake's on! And if you hadn't figured it out already, it's raining, so the quicker you can go and the less water we can get tracked onboard, the better."

"-But are you guys sure I'm allowed to do that?"

Reb's nervous expression, coupled with his agreement to move earlier said enough that he had no problem changing buses other than being shy over going on his own when it came down to actually doing it.

Before Kip could question going with him and missing his chance to talk with Jon in doing so, Rod -possibly the most beautiful human being to him in that moment -grabbed his rain jacket and Reb's, stood up, and passed Reb his while taking his hand.

"I'll go with you. Put that on," he ordered. "No discussion; we're going together, right now! Kip, if Paul wakes up feeling better and starts giving you a hard time, you tell him I said to behave before I tell him a thing or two!"

Kip laughed weakly, and even Reb had a short-lived laugh at Rod's mock frustration before the bus swerved into the pull-off and startled him again.

"No, then I'll be worried that Rick might actually be sick if he's not keeping him too busy to do that!"

The emergency pull-off shoulder they'd gotten into was conveniently longer than most others they'd passed, which would have barely fit two buses at best. This one was able to accommodate all three, with just the tail of the third having to hang slightly over the line into the lane. There was enough room for the average car to pass; however, the sheer size of the buses along the narrow road was intimidating to any average driver passing, and it was going to be especially tight and dangerous running between buses. They would still need to make it fast as the drivers had warned.

Rod peaked out the open bus door, and Reb stood on the steps behind him while Kip ran up to watch out the front window next to the driver. Because they were the last in the line of buses, he could see everything unfold as everyone began running between buses at once through the torrent of rain.

It was chaos. Pure chaos.

"Reb, we have all clear around the bend right now. Quick!"

Kip watched as Rod and Reb suddenly appeared in front of the bus, running awkwardly while turned sideways against Cinderella's bus in an attempt to stay behind the white line marking the lane. They paused between the buses to check over their shoulders for any emerging cars before running down the length of Bon Jovi's bus in front and up the steps, and just behind them, Tom emerged from his bus hugging Jeff LaBar to his side and looking much less concerned with staying out of the lane as just getting it over with quickly while there weren't cars coming. They both had to jump back as Alec and Richie sprang out the door and went barreling down the middle of road lane in the opposite direction, throwing all caution over cars to the wind before disappearing onto Cinderella's bus just as fast as they'd left their own.

Though it was hard to get a look at Jeff with how his raincoat nearly swallowed his small frame, which was just as well to minimize his embarrassment in the ordeal, the way he stumbled along beside Tom told Kip that his legs were shaking hard enough to give out if he didn't focus on keeping his knees braced. And if there was one thing Kip decided he had to love Jon Bon Jovi for -regardless of whether they had true feelings for each other, or never had and never would have with or without the existence of a history -this was it. He was willing to deal with his driver being angry with him for making them pull over and stop traffic, and willing to leave his own certainly-more-comfortable bus in the middle of a torrential downpour to try and give poor Jeff whatever level of comfort was achievable until their trip was over. And he'd extended the offer to Reb, who despite being uncomfortable, could have managed to ride it out if it had come down to that. Try as he might to stop it, or to conceal it to the outside world, Kip knew better than to deny to himself what had managed to get ahold of his heartstrings.

By the time Tom got up the steps with Jeff onto Jon's bus, Jeff was white as a sheet, on the verge of tears, and when Tom suddenly disappeared from his side to run back to his own bus, he looked more lost and disoriented than ever.

"Oh, Jeff, you're not feeling good at all." Once Jeff was out of his rain jacket, the shivering and hyperventilation wracking his body was on full display. Jon put his hands on his shoulders and leaned down to get a look at his dull eyes and grey cheeks. He was feverish from sustained panic.

Jeff shook his head and lowered it to hide. "I'm sorry..."

"Don't even apologize for what's out of our control. We're just gonna camp you out in the back with the other guys and close the windows and roll with it as best as we can. The couch is already folded out so there's plenty of room from the edge, and you all can just hang out and take it easy."

"We covered those couches up with some spare sheets just now too, so you don't need to worry about catching anything," Tico deadpanned.

"Here's a rare one; the TV in our back lounge actually works -no, I'm joking; I know that was bad luck that it doesn't work at all on your bus, Jeff -but if you want to raid our storage bin under the couch and put a movie in as a distraction, you can. Jon, I got him. I'll hang with him back there and make sure he's alright," said David, coming up beside Jeff upon returning from getting Reb and Rod settled. "Come on, we got Rod and Reb too, it'll be fun. We'll keep you good and distracted." 

Tico groaned. "In other words, we'll have to peel you guys off the ceiling when we arrive because it's gonna be a madhouse. Jeff, by the time we arrive, the only reason you're gonna have chest pains will be because they won't give you a break from laughing."

"The driver says we've got a little over an hour left; it could get rough, but we're halfway there -and with the way we're feeling, that puts a whole different meaning on 'Living on a Prayer' too! I got him, Jon."

Jeff managed to crack a weak smile at David's dig to turn Jon's "Hell on Wheels" pun back around on Bon Jovi, before disappearing to the lounge with him.

Back on Kip's bus, Kip was still watching it unfold from the front window. He watched Tom sprint back off Jon's bus the moment he'd dropped Jeff off, and almost laughed at how ridiculous Tom looked trying to leap over the potholes filled with water off the side of the road. His long, lanky legs caused his knee-length raincoat to kick out at the bottom as his heels went up, and he might as well have been in one of his wild stage costumes for how it looked.

But, funny appearance aside, he was fast enough to stick himself between the back of Jon's bus and the front of his own at the last second to dodge a passing car, before he swiftly jumped back inside his own and emerged seconds after with Rick to come his way.

Kip abandoned his vantage point then to meet them at the door.

"You good?" he asked.

"I'm doing great compared to everyone else, but I think we'll all be happy when we get there," said Rick.

"You, me, and everyone else," Kip agreed. He and Rick turned to crack up at Tom, who was running in place down by the bus door on the pavement with water splashing up around his boots.

Rick teased. "Excited to get somewhere, Tom?" 

"Out of the path of cars and out of the rain!" Tom hopped up on the lower step of the bus for partial shelter, just as another car rushed past and sprayed his back with water. "Damn it, _that_ too! And to get back on taking care of Eric -he didn't feel like moving and the rain was a real turnoff for him, but thanks for offering to let him come. And thanks for having Rick, Kip; you're awesome."

Kip feigned an incredulous look.

"You're not so bad yourself, Tom," he joked. "No, Rod and Reb both left, so it's only fair I have someone over here to balance it out."

Tom just nodded and ran back down the steps and back onto his bus.

"Our driver's real pissy over pulling off the road after all the drama," explained Rick. "Hence why Tom's feet are on fire and the wet road isn't enough to put 'em out!"

"I had the feeling." Kip smirked. "Ours is too, and we have our tail out in traffic. Anyway, you can make yourself at home in the back. We have the first aid kit and everything basic laid out on top of the cooler under the microwave of you need anything, and there's water in the cooler too. Anything else, by all means -just ask. If Paul wakes up feeling better, he'll probably join you."

"He won't be bored if he does." Rick grinned sinisterly.

Kip held his hands up and closed his eyes. "Hey, as long as you don't set the bus on fire, I'm not gonna try to stop you all from whatever trouble you get into."

With that, Paul was in his bunk, Rick was shut in the back lounge, and the driver was once again deaf and blind to anything aside from getting out of the pulloff as soon as they could. That left Kip on his own up front, just as Jon finally climbed aboard.

"About time!" shouted the driver before closing the door. He took off behind the other buses so quickly that Jon had to grab hold of the doorway to keep from careening across the aisle before he could take a seat next to Kip.

"Whoa!" Kip leaned toward the aisle and reached his hand out for Jon to take for stability as he let go of the doorway and crossed the remaining space to the open seat. "Thanks for having Reb over there. He'd have been alright, but he'll probably be better distracted now, so we all appreciate that."

"It was only fair if I was gonna do it for Jeff that I offered it to you guys too," Jon insisted, settling in next to Kip. "I'd have asked them to build more travel-time into the itinerary if I knew all that was going to happen -I just didn't argue when they said going by the back road would take off nearly two hours travel-time."

"No, I get it. When you have this many nights back-to-back, you want travel time down to a minimum just so you get a couple of hours without everyone asleep or running around trying to get stuff done," assured Kip. "And we didn't know it was gonna rain or that we would have someone aggressive-"

The bus took another tight curve, and Kip started to fall sideways, but felt resistance at his side as he and Jon both came to the realization they hadn't let go of each other's hands since Jon had sat down.

"Well, I guess that's one way to deal with the twists too," said Jon as a blush came to his face. "At least we can't be far from where we hook up with 211 to roll into town with as long as we've been on."

"We made it this far; something tells me we'll be fine the rest of the way -for a number of reasons." Kip sat back, watching out the side window as a break in the trees came along the road, indicating they were nearing the entrance to the stretch of interstate to hook them around to the last stretch of state road they would have to cover. 

Black, wicked-looking storm clouds lined the roadside, stretching over hilly fields that still had some jagged rock formations the road had to be built around rather than over, but just underneath the dark sky along the horizon, a faint glow of sunlight was showing. "We're halfway there, and the hardest part's behind us." He pointed out the window, then to where Rod had last marked the map before he'd left with Reb, which indeed showed them getting close to the home stretch.

Neither made a remark about it when they squeezed hands extra tightly and leaned together to brace each other when they rounded the sharp, clover-leaf ramp onto I-74. It would be sharper than any of the much looser turns on State road 211, but at that point, they knew they would still be holding on when they reached those too.

And when they finally pulled into Fayetteville and parked, ending their grueling cross-state journey, and when Rick came through the front of the bus to exit with Paul, who was awake and feeling himself again, the two were greeted with the sight of Kip and Jon deep enough in conversation to not notice that the bus had parked.

The last half hour of the trip had been a smooth ride with no sharp or sudden turns, but the two were still holding hands, and to Paul's eye, they were sitting very close to each other. Comfortably close. Not leaning together, but with no visible space between their bodies.

Pleased with the sight, he smiled, shared a shrug with Rick, and motioned for the other keyboardist to follow him off the bus, leaving Jon and Kip to themselves.


	13. 11. Road of Rages, Can't Stay Rolling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon and Kip hoped for some time together before the show in Richmond. A little thing called "tunnel traffic" has other plans for them. And with less tension in the air, they find that they can no longer escape a bit of teasing from their bandmates, especially when everyone is stir-crazy and bored while stuck on a bus in traffic. Chaos is inescapable. At least they both have their eyes out the windows and on a better chance ahead!

The bus crawled up a slowly-forming car length before it at the very start of the seemingly-endless stretch of concrete balanced atop its truss. Out the side windows of the bus, the opposite direction was facilitating heavy traffic, but seemed to be doing much better by comparison. The waters of the James River lapped at the posts supporting the span.

Said span was only three and a half miles, and a tunnel broke it up at some point. Though after an hour-long crawl through the five-mile backup leading up to the actual crossing, what lay ahead felt endless at just the beginning.

Sun beat down directly on the bus from overhead, warming the concrete so it radiated back up around each vehicle. Undeterred by any trees, it heated up anything standing still to a temperature just hot enough to be slightly uncomfortable.

And as the bus continued to slowly crawl along with each car length that opened, Jon, Richie, and Lemma found themselves creeping to the front of the bus to sit up front with the driver, unable to take the torturous sight of the Eastbound traffic moving uninhibited from the side window any longer.

"Man, if we couldn't have run back and forth across this thing twice -while carrying Lemma's practice keyboard," complained Richie, standing next to the open side window where a humid, coastal breeze blew in off the water.

"Oh, I don't doubt you boys could have if you went as hard as you do onstage." As traffic settled to a stop again, the driver put on the brake and sat back, crossing his arms over his chest with a sigh while watching and waiting for the two-lane sea of brake lights ahead to go dark.

"What road is this again?" asked Jon. "What road are we on right now?"

"64," called Tico from the front lounge.

"Interstate 64, Westbound." The driver clarified for them all.

Jon groaned. "I-64; more like I- _hate_ -64."

Traveling to Richmond was taking far too long. The distance from the hotel was approximately a hundred miles, with a speed limit at 60 for a good portion of the trip. It should have only taken two hours at the most, but between coming back through Virginia Beach and Norfolk, and currently attempting to cross to Hampton by the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, they'd faced enough traffic to take up nearly that much time. They still had fifty miles from Hampton to Richmond on the other side of the crossing, not counting the distance once they reached the city. Considering that and averaging out the speed limits, they had roughly another hour and a half to go. If they were to get up to speed right where they stood in traffic and stayed up to speed the rest of the trip.

For sure, that 'if' was not happening. The bridge looked like a parking lot from the elevated view of the buses.

Since their bus ride to Fayetteville, Jon and Kip had no downtime in the convoluted path from Fayetteville to Hampton, and the circling around Hampton Roads. They'd called each other in their rooms in Virginia Beach with the hope of having some time before the show in Richmond, seeing that the drive was a straightforward path.

Of course, they'd both forgotten with the rush to get ready after arriving late to soundcheck in Hampton that traffic would easily double the length of the trip. While yesterday hadn't been as bad, they'd gotten a strong enough taste of the notorious "HRBT" and its backups to have anticipated it, if they'd been thinking about where they'd be traveling rather than each other.

Jon hoped that was a good sign. He hoped that being able to forget why they'd been late to soundcheck and the possibility of it happening again while talking to each other counted for something good. Because _something_ had to be the silver lining of the misery they were stuck in.

"This traffic is pathetic."

"Jon, you're complaining about the traffic _here?"_ The driver looked over to him incredulously. "When you're in New Jersey and have all the traffic in your corridor coming from Manhattan? I ain't buyin' it."

"Except this isn't like that. There isn't an excuse for it here like there is up there. We're past the bottleneck now, so there's no reason to be crawling like this anymore. They're slowing down over _stupid_ stuff!"

"Okay, I gotta give you that. Some of what I've been seeing is pretty stupid."

"Like when someone does something stupid, and everyone else two lanes over has to hit the brakes so they can go-" David bugged his eyes out, clapped his hands to his cheeks, bent his knees so that he shrank down nearly a full foot, and drew in a loud, dramatic gasp. "Did they just do what I think I saw them do? They DID! Look what they just did! Did you SEE what they DID?! I _cannot_ believe what they did!"

Richie, Jon, and the driver had a collective laugh, and a soft chuckle rang behind them from Tico in the lounge.

Jon sighed after giving an impatient bounce in the passenger chair. "It's called rubbernecking, if you ask mid-westerners, supposedly."

"What, like you've been rubbernecking out the window of the bus at your Midwestern crush, Jon?" Richie teased. "He's probably familiar with that term."

Indeed, Jon had been looking out the window earlier, and he had gotten a view of the Winger bus while he was looking. They were in the right lane, and he had been watching while his driver and Cinderella's driver were trying to create a gap for the bus to merge back into the two through-lanes after they'd been cut off from getting back in after crossing the inspection station scales. When the driver was trying to gauge whether he'd pulled forward far enough, Jon was reporting back from the window.

It took awhile, because greedy drivers kept jumping into any gaps ahead of them with their cars, taking the space before it was large enough to accommodate a bus.

_Come on, guys, let them over,_ Jon had silently willed as they intermittently shifted up, bumper to bumper, trying to open up a new space without another car taking it, and watching as the exit the right lane terminated in got closer. _You guys are being jerks._

But in addition to the drivers who kept jumping in the gaps, no other cars in the left two lanes were really keen on letting a bus in. The left two lanes were already excessively backed up from everyone having to stop to let people riding the disappearing right lane up back in. Unlike the bus, they didn't have the reason of having to go through the inspection lane though. They were just people who couldn't be bothered to wait in line, and made the line longer for everyone else because of it.

The struggle to merge a bus over continued for nearly a mile leading up to the bridge, right up to the exit itself, and the bus drivers collectively got into a honking match with surrounding cars to finally get the bus merged in rather than forced down the exit or illegally into the shoulder lane, which wasn't wide enough for a bus anyway.

While Jon hadn't seen Kip through the ordeal, and while it wasn't his main goal for looking out the window, he had hoped deep down to see Kip looking out the window of his bus too.

"What do they call the 'Jersey Slide' in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia?" asked Jon, thinking of sudden lane-shifting in the opposite direction bouncing off his previous thought. "Because they did an awful lot of that on the way through Virginia Beach and Norfolk too."

"Find someone who lives around here and ask'em," Alec muttered as he came into the lounge and joined the conversation. "Someone in Richmond tonight could probably tell you."

"I've heard it called the 'Norfolk Slalom' by a few guys in the fleet," offered the driver. "None of them are locals though, so I wouldn't bet on it being what they actually call it around here."

"How about we call it 'oh, dear, I'm about to miss my exit and I'm too much of an asshole to take the next one and get back on to catch it from the other side'!" Richie did his old lady impression, complete with a gasp and a clap of his hands to his cheeks along with the raspy falsetto, playing off David's earlier impression. "So I have to cut off every lane to the right of me!"

"That's just about it," agreed the driver, "at least in terms of why."

"Or how about "I HAD to get around the bus even though there wasn't proper time to get back in the right lane before the exit -I just HAD to!"

"And that'd be just about every time the other wasn't the case. They'll probably complain about the ungodly amount of patience it takes to be stuck behind a bus; they oughta know how much patience it takes having to put up with them. Especially when they cut off a vehicle that needs more distance to stop!"

"Hey, at least there's two lanes here -three back there even -and they weren't driving into oncoming traffic like the other day," Jon tried. _"That_ was bad."

"That _was_ bad," agreed Tico, now standing in the passageway between the front lounge and the driver's compartment. He nodded in unison with the driver, who didn't even bother to voice it.

"You think? You oughta have heard the rant Tom went on after we moved around and got going again over what he had to clean up." Richie started laughing. "He was slamming the stuff that got knocked out of his suitcase back in like he was trying to murder it! Don't know what his shower kit and his clothes ever did to him."

"I don't blame him when he already packed those once that morning and had to pack them again, especially when we left that early-"

"Now Tico, you can't complain about getting up early to me," warned the driver, though he had a hint of a laugh in his voice as he crawled forward into the minuscule car length that opened before them. "I was up two hours before you guys got your wakeup calls, and I know you didn't come bounding up out of bed the second you got it."

"That's true, and you know we appreciate you for it, every night and every day," ceded Tico. "But with Tom -I don't know what happened with Reb; he looked pretty rough when Rod brought him on, but he was actually pretty funny once he got his bearings. But Lemma and I just about had to sit on Jeff before he settled down, and that wasn't until pretty close to when we arrived. Lord knows what Tom dealt with before we got him over here."

"More than enough, and that's why we stopped. And Kip said their driver blew a fuse -understandably so -but that was just _bad."_

"I dunno, Jon..." Ritchie grinned devilishly. "It didn't seem like it was such a bad thing for you. Almost seemed like you wished you had Kip along for the ride here yesterday. Wouldn't be surprised if you do today."

"Richie, if you're asking me to confirm or deny that, I won't. Stop digging."

"Aw, come on, admit it. You weren't thinking of that before it happened, but now you are."

"Or maybe he wishes he could pull that phone again," David added.

_"Lemma..."_ Jon tried to sound serious, pitching his voice low and slowly rising in tone, but he couldn't help it, and his resolve broke. "Come on, Lemma; I thought we had a talk about this. Not you too!"

"Maybe you should ask, Jonny. No need to check updates on what's ahead of us; we can see it from here!"

The driver sat back again with a huff as traffic went back to a stop. "Yeah, now you all want to use the phone and switch buses mid-ride just because you know it's possible to do and that it's been done before. I let you boys open Pandora's box, didn't I?"

"Yeah, you did, and everyone's _'digging'_ in it," quipped David.

"Especially Jon," Richie insisted, visibly and audibly enjoying himself far too much. "He's digging like a dog alone in the yard with no one to stop him!"

Jon pitched forward, slamming his face down in his hands to shake his head. Sometimes he could swear that with the jokesters Richie and David were together, he practically needed to follow the Miranda warning with them. Anything he said could -and surely would -be twisted into a joke to harass him with whenever they saw fit.

"Come on, guys; we're not stopping. There's no room anywhere to pull over on the bridge anyway."

The rest of them all cracked up, even the driver when he saw he'd successfully teased Jon into looking bashful over it, and then Richie held his finger up in thought.

"You know, traffic's moving so slow, you could practically do it again, right here in our lane."

Jon sighed. "No, I don't think that'd be a good idea-"

"NO." The driver spoke so forcefully that all traces of laughter disappeared from the atmosphere and it shut down any further thought of it.

"They patrol this tunnel way too well for that. Unless you boys and everyone on the other buses want to pick up extra fees from the bus company because you got us fined on traffic violation-"

"No, I'm not doing that to Tom, or Kip for that matter."

"You won't do it to Kip -of course not," said David. You're on his good side. You don't wanna lose that again."

"I don't want that either, but in general, I don't want them to deal with it." Now Jon was visibly pink in the cheeks, and too suddenly to blame it on the sun's heat blazing through the windshield.

"You know, it's not like it would make much difference, but I'd rather save the fine for cleanup after a hotel party or something of the like if we're going to be fined for anything," said Alec, "and I think all of us would say the same." 

He pushed his way forward, causing Tico to shove up further behind Richie and David around the back of the passenger chair, and that finally prompted the driver to take his eyes off the traffic for a second to look over.

"Hey! What, now I got all five of you up here? Oh, jeez..." he groaned. "You guys better tone it down, or I'm gonna put everyone out of my wheelhouse. Too many distractions. I shouldn't have this many of you up here for the number of times it's happened anyway. I'll bend the regulations that aren't too obvious from outside the bus, but if you scream, you're out!"

Richie and David collectively tried to imitate Jon's high line at the end of "Runaway" right then and there at that remark, prompting Jon, Alec, and Tico to crack up -until the driver put the bus in park right in the middle of the lane, not that they were falling far behind for it, and stood up to come at them. Then they all realized he was serious, and Tico and Alec bailed for the lounge without a fight.

"Now you've done it!" Jon grinned tiredly and pulled Richie and David along with him before the driver could get too far from his seat.

"Out! Now! No argument. Out! Don't say I didn't warn you boys."

"You did, more than once." Jon assured him that he was plenty aware. "Come on, guys. Out."

.........

Seeing that they were well onto the bridge and the tension of merging had cleared from the air, Kip decided to go up to the front just to get a look at how much backup there still was ahead.

"Are we finally starting to move?" he asked the driver.

"Traffic ahead seems to not have as many brake lights, so hopefully. Still is going way under the speed limit, but we'll take any movement we can get. It didn't help that we had to go through the inspection lane."

"Well, we suspected that might happen. Usually does." Kip sighed. "At least it's not a full inspection where they make us park and stop."

"That's because they still had the height on the log from yesterday, though they still could have pulled us."

"Guess they took pity since it gave us a fit trying to get back on into traffic yesterday." Taking a final look at the standstill traffic he could make out around the back of the bus in front of their view, Kip turned around and made his way back through the bus, deciding that the chances of Jon being able to get to him tonight were pretty much down to none. He needed no explanation.

"Well, what do we have in front of us?" asked Rod. "It feels better than it did, but we're still not going far.

"It's still looking pretty claustrophobic. We're just moving a little more than we were."

"How much longer do you think we're gonna be stuck here?"

"If it does that thing it did yesterday where everyone finally got going halfway across, five minutes," said Kip. "But if we keep crawling with the stack we've got in front of us, like there's something actually going on up there on the other end, then we'll be thankful to be off in twenty."

"Well, I think we can all get real comfortable with the idea of another rushed soundcheck," Reb grumbled, "since I can tell that's where we're headed."

"And an overheated bus," Paul complained. 

"Yeah, and what is that all about anyway? This is late April in Virginia. This can't possibly be normal!"

"Oh, yes it can," said Rod. "Maybe not inland, but on the coast it can be. And humid. Be glad we were playing inside last night."

"At least they have a good radio station." Paul pointed to the radio on the shelf over the couch. "The disc jockey talking between the songs has a real good sense of humor, and by that I mean screwed up, so that makes it half-bearable. He even made a joke about the 'traffic backed up over the Willoughby Bay bridge leading up to the HRBT' -wouldn't you know we were just there half an hour ago?"

"And that we've barely made it over two miles from there?" asked Reb. He paused and pointed at the radio as the opening of "Rock of Ages" by Def Leppard began to play on the radio, clanking out the base rhythm on the cowbell.

"You know, all you have to do is adjust some words and we could have a rant over all this road rage right here!"

"Road of Rages!" exclaimed Kip, pointing back at Reb.

"And 'I hate 64' too!"

"Even better!"

"Sometimes, I don't know where you guys get it from." Rod just grinned up from the couch. "All I know is I'm glad for the entertainment at times like these."

"Come on, get in on it with me; 'I hate 64'!" Reb took the lead as the first 'I want rock and roll' break came up.

"What road we're on?" he called out, pointing over at Paul, who repeated it, before they all got to shouting out their dislike for the interstate number.

Paul got a mischievous look. "Wait, are you just doing the chorus, or-"

Reb held up a finger and lowered his eyebrows with contempt, and that was all they needed to know he'd thought it out for at least one verse. "Just wait."

"Oh, _great!"_

As Reb whispered the chorus lyrics to Paul, Kip shared a knowing look with Rod that said everything. _Get a good breath of air now, 'cause we're gonna be knocked out after this if we know any better._

"Oh boy, here we go," said Rod as he saw Paul strike a pose as Joe Elliott gave his scream of 'oh, yeah, yeah!' leading into the chorus. 

_"Road of rages! Road of rages! Can't keep rolling! Still not rolling..."_

"You know, we don't even need the brake slam to get whiplash with how hard we're head-banging to this today," Rod cracked as he joined Paul and Reb in head-banging to the beat to imitate the music video of the original song.

"Hey, better this than that," Reb protested in the break before going all out on his own on the verse.

_"I'm burnin', burnin', got brake light fever. I know for SURE, some horn's gonna blow!"_

Kip lost it then, flopping back on the couch and wheezing as he cracked up. It didn't help that Reb had wildly gestured with his emphasis to imitate road-raged drivers reaching up for their rear-view mirrors to flip middle-finger salutes to other drivers.

_"I see there's a car length tryin to form..."_ Reb had the most pained look in his eyes as he held back from laughing so he could continue singing.

"Hey, we're moving!" Rod's was verging on stir-crazed hysterics, and steady movement along with the hilarity was all but enough to make him lose it. "We're in the entry of the tunnel and we've actually started moving!"

_"...get me one inch up the road!"_ Reb nodded his acknowledgement and pointed to Paul to sing the trade-off and backups with him.

_"What Road we're on?"_ chanted Paul.

_"What Road we're on?"_

_"I hate 64!"_ Reb and Paul chanted together. They were immediately answered by Joe Elliott's interjection of _'yes I do!'_ from the radio, which fit so well that they laughed too hard to add 'crawl down 64' as they had the first time before going into the guitar solo. During which the bus finally hit a spritely 30 miles per hour as they began the climb from the bottom of the tunnel.

By the time the bus came out onto the shorter segment of the bridge after the tunnel, they were chanting the chorus and pumping fists in the air as if to finally cheer the bus on toward a full speed of 55.

_Road of rages! Road of rages! Can't keep rolling! Still not rolling..."_

_"We got a stand-still, at the tunnel, and if you're stuck here..."_ Reb motioned to Kip, who was just barely able to pull it together to do the raspy power scream with him. 

_"...and if you're still here, say yeah! Say yeah!"_

_"We're gonna burn this damn bridge down!"_ Reb sang with resolution, just as the bus passed the threshold from the raised concrete truss of the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel back onto pavement with solid ground underneath. That effectively incapacitated Kip from speaking any of his thoughts right away as he collapsed with laughter, taken off-guard.

Paul stared at Reb with a crazed look of shock and amusement.

"Reb, I think that's the most malicious set of lyrics you've made up that wasn't aimed at some person that did you or one of us wrong!"

"I don't know, Paul, if you ask Kip, maybe it _did!"_

"Stop; stop!" Kip wiped his eyes and slapped the seat beside him. "Ugh, I'm crying. Reb, you're gonna kill me. Now I know how Rod felt the other week when you got him going, Paul."

"Do you feel better now?" teased Rod. "What was it, 'therapeutic laughter' that Paul was calling it?"

"Is that it?" Reb stood beside the couch looking plenty impressed with himself.

"Give me a moment to recover from the stitches you just put in my side, then wait until we arrive in Richmond, and I'll feel fantastic! A couple of nights off in Hershey, and even better."

"Yeah, this was pretty opportune timing, wasn't it?" joked Paul.

"What?" asked Kip, playing along. "Last of five consecutive nights, all feeling it, limited time, cooped up on a hot bus, and a seemingly short ride..."

"Direct does not equal fastest in some areas, that is for sure." Rod opened the exterior vent along the lower rim of the window in hopes of getting some airflow in now that they were up to a speed that would make it possible to get it.

"Whoever in management got a hotel for everyone in Virginia Beach after last night and put us on the other side of that tunnel so we had to go through it _again_..." Reb left his threat unfinished.

"It's not the end of the world," Kip murmured flatly, more than anything else to keep himself from getting annoyed at it when there was no worthy point in it.

Tonight was the twenty-second of the month, and they didn't have another performance afterward until the twenty-fifth in Hershey. If tonight couldn't work, they had plenty of opportunity ahead. It was only unfortunate with only two weeks left and would have to place bets on phone calls working out again. More specifically, Kip would have to hope Jon wouldn't forget, and with as much time as they'd had now, he wasn't quite sure how he'd respond if it went badly again.

But unlike forgotten phone calls, the tour itinerary wasn't in Jon's control -no more than it was in his own. And neither was traffic. 

"It's a damn good thing we had the crews staying up there with the gear last night," insisted Reb, and the playfulness had faded to reveal the typical pre-show nerves in his eyes. "We're the first ones who have to be ready to go, and we're already going to be way late to soundcheck, considering there's no way we're getting from just off the bridge into Hampton to Richmond in under half an hour."

"I'd say we'd just go take a nap in our bunks and give up having one when we get there, but I don't see myself falling asleep now," said Kip.

Reb shook his head. He was in the same boat.

"What we just did is as good as I'm gonna get for getting out the nerves. Too bad it wasn't closer to where we're going."

"Well, again, at least we're actually _moving."_ Rod sat back down.

From where he knelt on the couch to watch out the window, and catch the draft coming in, Paul picked up Reb's earlier roadway-bashing and mocked an overzealous wave out the window.

"Goodbye, HRBT! Happy to say we won't be seeing you again for months!"

............

After getting back up to speed, anticipating the next turn of the road they'd need to take, the driver shifted into the left lane with a clearing, suggesting that the other buses should eventually follow when they found the way clear. They didn't want a fight over merging again in Richmond traffic, or while passing by more military bases in Williamsburg. And unfortunately, the delay at the tunnel had set them up to pass both Fort Eustis and Camp Peary at peak hour for departure of daily personnel, which would mean more slow-downs.

All for nothing. When they'd come off the bridge, Jon saw a few cop cars dealing with the remains of an accident before a long backup on the Eastbound lanes. The entire backup had been Westbound traffic slowing down to rubberneck at what was happening on the other side, and nothing else.

"Damn it. All that sitting in traffic made the bus _hot."_ Situating himself with a hard flounce down on the couch, Jon fanned himself aggressively with his itinerary notebook.

"Sure there's not something _else_ you're hot and bothered over?" David spoke in a slowly rising tone.

"Lemma, shut your trap." Now that he wasn't struggling with Kip, his bandmates had traitorously denied him any mercy in whatever they had going together.

And he had to be stuck on a bus with them and their lack of having nothing better to do than teasing. For almost two hours extra because of stupid rubbernecking!

"Hey, the air vents aren't working," said Richie, suddenly looking up with a mischievous grin. The fact he was smiling alone would have been a sign enough to tip Jon off, had his mind been on a steady track. But today, it wasn't, and he did not find it one bit funny. Rather, he found it the exact opposite. And between the exasperation of heat and his patience having already been worn through with their traffic jam, he snapped.

"What?! Richie, you'd better be fucking joking, and if you're not-!"

"Now that would be a problem," agreed Tico, grinning because he did know better.

"You're kidding me."

Richie held his hands up, slightly taken aback, but unable to keep from laughing at Jon's high-strung reaction.

"I am, I am. Don't worry, I am."

"You're kidding me," Jon insisted. "You're _kidding_ me!" 

"I am; it was a joke. It's working fine." Richie put a sheet of paper in front of the vent under the window so that they could see the air flow move it. "See?"

"Richie, you are full of it today."

David got up next to Richie. "Jon, you ought to come over here if you're so hot and bothered so you can actually get next to it and cool off." He looked out the window and sprang a viciously shit-eating grin that removed any doubt that he was playing with his next words.

"Or, you can rubberneck out the window, but I don't think it will help too much. But maybe it will."

"Now _you're_ kidding me," said Jon. But he looked out the window, and sure enough, Kip was in the window of the bus next to theirs, looking out along the side with Reb, probably attempting to figure out where they were in traffic and see if Cinderella's bus had managed to get left in the traffic flow yet.

Whether it was the result of being purely stir-crazy and amped up, or whatever else Jon couldn't think of, when he saw Kip look in his direction and saw his face light up when he realized he was there, he started laughing.

Richie and David then decided to feign a complete freakout, getting in the windows on either side of Jon and slapping their hands against the glass above their heads and clawing down the panes with their faces mashed into the surface. Until Jon reached over, pulled them back with one hand and dropped the shades on either side of the pane he was standing before with the other. He then turned back to Kip with an exaggerated sigh that heaved his shoulders and a grin of submission to his bandmates' antics. 

_What do you even do with this?_

All Kip had been able to see was Jon surrounded by his bandmates all up in the window with faces mocking prisoners desperate for escape and quick glances toward Jon suggesting he was the evil being holding them hostage, before the shades dropped.

There was the briefest of moments for Jon to catch Kip's signature quizzical look -one eyebrow up, the other angled down, and his mouth in a half-smirk -before he lost it and started laughing too. Just when Kip would start to settle down, Jon would go off again and set him off too, and neither could keep a straight enough face to mouth anything readable to each other.

When Kip shook his head, clapped his hand over his face, and leaned against the window at Jon's pitiful attempt, Jon lifted a weak hand up to point at Kip through the window, and as soon as he saw Kip look up to see it, he ran from the window, because he couldn't take it any longer. 

Not that he could really escape, because when he turned around, he met Richie and David laughing right in his face, pointing at him!

"Aw, man, you guys aren't ever gonna let this go away," Jon groaned. "With the way you guys are acting, I can tell you're not letting me live it down."

"With the way you're acting right now, if you forget to call Kip when we split in May, it's gonna hang over your head as long as the rest of us are living, Jonny!"

"Jon, I got someone on the phone up here for you," called the driver. "The rest of you are still out, and you'd all better stay out. Don't make me pull us over!"

Whether it was to spite the driver, harass Jon, or both, his bandmates chased him right up to the threshold of the driver's compartment.

"Aw, come on," Jon groaned through laughter as he made his way through. "You guys are even going to dig in my phone calls?"

"Come on, guys." Tico finally took some pity on him. "Let's at least sit on the couch instead of standing in the doorway so that he has some sense of phone privacy -as much as possible at least. You can't complain that we're still in the front lounge, Jon; there's no such thing as privacy on a bus!"

When the phones connected, Kip could tell Jon was still laughing, because he could hear the muffled sound of Richie and Lemma teasing him in the background -from the front lounge where they were technically outside the driver's compartment -and tremors in his breathing and speech. Not to mention that Jon could only manage a one-word question, and _why did he sound so innocent and naughty all at the same time, and for that matter, why was that so endearing?_

"Hershey?"

"I think that's what we'll have to do. Because we're _definitely_ not getting off as soon as we hoped."

"Hell, no." Jon sighed as he regained himself, unable to shake a flutter in his chest at the way Kip's flat voice shook with suppressed laughter on 'definitely'. "Aw, man, help me. Any time in particular, or are we just going to try and find each other?"

"We're driving overnight, so I guess we can adjust if we need to based on how late we arrive. Does 3:00 work as a starting point?"

"Yeah," he said. "We'll aim for that and figure it out."

And for all the heckling he knew still lay ahead, and knowing the buses would all leave Richmond together due to the length of the drive, Jon resolved that he would be awake and waiting for Kip to come off his bus when they arrived to the hotel so they could check in and figure it out right there. Sure, he could do it by phone call in the hotel. He doubted forgetting to call would be an issue with the thoughts he'd had since their bus ride together in North Carolina. If it did become one, well, that was a thought scary enough to make Jon consider getting his head examined in the event it did. But even if a conversation wasn't likely to go much further than confirming the time at the hour they were scheduled to arrive in Pennsylvania, why miss out on a chance to see Kip in person while they still could?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parody lyrics are my own, and that's my hometown area, so I have fair game to rag on it.


End file.
